COMBO 2023 Year In Review

2023 In Numbers

We now have over 3,000 study participants (1,500 mother-baby pairs!), who have generously shared their life experiences during the pandemic with us. The data COMBO continues to gather from these families are invaluable to the study of “the COVID-19 generation.”
In order to serve our many participating families, and to meet the demands for analyzing and publishing our data, we added 53 new personnel to our team in 2023.
9 students from multiple schools within Columbia University graduated with theses using COMBO data
Members of our team presented over 30 poster and oral presentations at conferences around the world, including (but certainly not limited to):

Our Year at COMBO

In April, 2 of our postdocs, Morgan Firestein and Lauren Shuffrey, co-first-authored an important paper in JAMA Network Open, which showed no association between prenatal exposure to mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 infection and future infant neurodevelopment. We hope these data are comforting to expecting parents, and to parents who may have contracted COVID during pregnancy.

Also in April, we had our 2nd annual COMBO Playdate to give back to our Washington Heights community. With over 300 families, 50+ volunteers, and a trombone dance party with America’s Got Talent star Jonathan Arons, the event was a resounding success!

In June, 4 of our students stepped into new full-time roles: 2 as research coordinators and 2 as data coordinators.

In August, we started surveys and video visits for study participants who are now three years old!

Also in August, we launched “The COMBO Project” in REDcap: technology that will allow us to more effectively store and manage our data, now that COMBO has grown so much.

In September, our Principal Investigator, Dr. Dani Dumitriu, hosted a wellness retreat full of team activities, including yoga, and even a chef who cooked delicious meals for us, while we turned our science brains off for the day.

Also in September, postdoc Morgan Firestein was awarded a highly-competitive K99/R00 (also known as the NIH Pathway to Independence Award) to study prenatal extracurricular vesicles and sex steroids as early markers of child neurodevelopment in the COMBO cohort. In addition to funding her last two years of postdoc training, this award provides 3 years of support in Morgan’s future independent lab!

In October, we threw a Halloween party at the lab — including, of course, a costume contest! (The winners: “copycats!”)

In November, two other postdocs hit major milestones: Andreane Lavallee submitted her own K99/R00, to understand mechanisms of parent-child emotional synchrony in promoting healthy development in the COMBO cohort. This is a huge effort, and we’re so proud of her. Also, Jennifer Warmingham got her license to practice psychotherapy, as well as an LRP (Loan Repayment Program), another type of a highly-competitive NIH grant that helps offset the educational loans of promising early career researchers.

Also in November, the olfaction team, led by COMBO’s Jonathan Overdevest, MD, PhD, in collaboration with the CDC, submitted a paper on maternal postpartum subjective and objective smell function. The team collected a heroic 335 at-home smell kits!

Cheers to 2023! This has been such a productive year for the COMBO Initiative. We’re incredibly proud of our team for their tireless efforts, and profoundly grateful to every family who participates in our research. We look forward to the discoveries in mother-child health that await us in 2024, and we can’t wait to share them with you.