Boland Lab

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My name is Mary Regina Boland. I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Biomedical Informatics and an Affiliate Member of the Center for Excellence in Environmental Toxicology at University of Pennsylvania. I am also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health informatics (DBHi) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I lead the Fertility and Health Informatics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

Currently, I have published over 50 peer-reviewed publications in journals and respected informatics conferences, including 6 as senior-author this past year (2019-2020).

I am the doctoral consortium chair for the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME) this August in Minnesota. The AIME doctoral consortium is taking place Aug 26^th! It will be a virtual conference and I hope to see you virtually there!

Research Summary

On the informatics-side, my work focuses on developing novel and interesting data mining methods that integrate data from electronic health records, observational health data and genetic data. On the clinical side, my work focuses on the relationship between environment and disease, especially during the prenatal / perinatal period. Because developmental effects due to the environment can be hard to study in adult populations, I use birth-related data (such as birth month) as a proxy for the environment at birth (perinatal) and prior to birth (prenatal). Previously, I completed my PhD in biomedical informatics at Columbia University.

Recent News

• Owen Wetherbee's paper just published: O Wetherbee, J Meeker, C DeVoto, T Penning, J Moore, MR Boland. WellExplorer: An Integrative Resource Linking Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals with Targeted Proteins, Hormonal Pathways and Geographic Location. Database. 2020; In press.
• Lena Davidson's paper published in spring 2020: L Davidson, MR Boland. Enabling Pregnant Women and their Physicians to Make Informed Medication Decisions Using Artificial Intelligence. Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics. 2020; In Press.
• Aditya Kashyap's paper published in early 2020 (PhD student in Computer Science): A Kashyap, H Burris, C Callison-Burch, MR Boland. The CLASSE GATOR (CLinical Acronym SenSE disambiGuATOR): A Method for Predicting Acronym Sense from Neonatal Clinical Notes. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 2020. In press.
• Dr. Silvia Canelon's paper published in early 2020: S Canelon, MR Boland. A Systematic Literature Review on Factors Affecting the Timing of Menarche: Potential for Climate Change to Impact Women's Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2020. In press. 
• Phiwinhlanhla Ndebele-Ngwenya will be presenting the work she conducted this past summer in the Boland Lab at SACNAS 2019. Ms. Ndebele-Ngwenya also won a travel award to present her work in Honolulu Hawaii (Oct 31-Nov 2)!
• Dr. Snigdha Alur-Gupta won the 1^st prize from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) for her work conducted this past year (Dr. Boland — informatics mentor), as of Aug 2020 this paper is in press: S Alur-Gupta, MR Boland, K Barnhart, M Sammel, A Dokras. Postpartum Complications Increased in Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2020; In press. 

Recent Senior or First Author Publications

• O Wetherbee, J Meeker, C DeVoto, T Penning, J Moore, MR Boland. WellExplorer: An Integrative Resource Linking Hydraulic Fracturing Chemicals with Targeted Proteins, Hormonal Pathways and Geographic Location. Database. 2020; In press.
• L Davidson, MR Boland. Enabling Pregnant Women and their Physicians to Make Informed Medication Decisions Using Artificial Intelligence. Journal of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics. 2020; In Press.
• S Canelon, MR Boland. A Systematic Literature Review on Factors Affecting the Timing of Menarche: Potential for Climate Change to Impact Women's Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2020. In press.
• R Bai, GE Moran, J Antonelli, Y Chen*, MR Boland*. Spike-and-Slab Group Lassos for Grouped Regression and Sparse Generalized Additive Models. Journal of American Statistical Association (JASA) Applications. 2020; In press. *Joint Senior Author
• L Davidson, MR Boland. Comparative Analysis and Evaluation of State-of-the-Art Medication Mapping Tools to Transform a Local Medication Terminology to RxNorm. AMIA Informatics Summit 2020, Houston, Tx, USA (full paper). In press.
• A Kashyap, H Burris, C Callison-Burch, MR Boland. The CLASSE GATOR (CLinical Acronym SenSE disambiGuATOR): A Method for Predicting Acronym Sense from Neonatal Clinical Notes. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 2020. In press.
• MR Boland, M Fieder, LH John, P Rijnbeek, S Huber. Female Reproductive Performance and Maternal Birth Month: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Exploring Multiple Seasonal Mechanisms. Scientific Reports. 2020; 10:555.
• MR Boland, ML Casal, M Kraus, AR Gelzer. Applied Veterinary Informatics: Development of a Semantic and Domain-Specific Method to Construct a Canine Data Repository. Scientific Reports. 2019; 9: 18641.
• MR Boland, NP Tatonetti. Attention Deficit–Hyperactivity Disorder and Month of School Enrollment. NEJM 2019;380(7):692-693.

Education

PhD Biomedical Informatics, 2017 Columbia University, 2013-2017

Doctoral Thesis: Systems-Level Approach to Understand the Seasonal Factors of Early Development with Clinical and Pharmacological Applications

MPhil Biomedical Informatics, 2016 Columbia University

MA Biomedical Informatics, 2012 Columbia University, 2010-2012

Masters Thesis: Associating Periodontal Diseases with Medical Conditions by Linking Medical and Dental Records

BS Bioinformatics, 2010 Saint Vincent College, 2006-2010

Undergraduate Thesis: Functional Annotation of Putatively Conserved Non-Coding Regions in B. Floridae

Minors: Computer Science, History