Eci biocommentary: katherine bell

You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF I grew up in Northern California, then attended Dartmouth College, followed by the University of California San Diego

School of Medicine. There, I fell in love with pediatrics after witnessing how interventions in childhood can have far-reaching consequences for lifelong health. I completed pediatric

residency at Children’s Hospital Oakland and Neonatology fellowship at the Harvard Perinatal-Neonatal Medicine Program. I am currently an academic neonatologist at Brigham and Women’s

Hospital in Boston, and an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Katherine A. Bell I always loved the process of scientific discovery, and during medical school, my passion

for patient care inspired me to explore clinical research. I obtained a student grant for a full-time research elective under Dr. Chandra Ramamoorthy at Stanford University, working on a

clinical study of neuromonitoring strategies during pediatric heart catheterization. This study found that a novel monitoring strategy using cerebral oximetry might help optimize later

neurologic outcomes. Witnessing firsthand how research could directly impact patient care strategies and patient outcomes inspired me to pursue a career as a physician-scientist performing

patient-oriented research. As I entered neonatology fellowship, I was struck by the fact that adequate nutrition and growth during infancy are critical to optimizing long-term health.

Therefore, I chose to focus my research training in neonatal nutrition. I met my primary research mentor, Dr. Mandy Brown Belfort, who has been a driving force in my research career with her

tireless guidance, support, and passion for neonatal nutrition research. Under her mentorship, I developed expertise in using novel body composition techniques to monitor infant nutritional

status. I found that lean mass—a marker of nutrient accretion—is associated with larger brain size and improved brain maturation, which predict later neurodevelopment, reinforcing the

importance of early nutritional exposures for optimizing brain development and long-term outcomes. As part of this work, I analyzed brain magnetic resonance images to quantify brain size and

development, with guidance and mentorship from Dr. Terrie Inder. However, my colleagues and I realized that there was no validated simple method for measuring temporal lobe development on

magnetic resonance imaging. Therefore, my co-first author Dr. Carmina Erdei and I set out to develop the novel temporal lobe metrics published in this issue of _Pediatric Research_. We

believe these metrics will be useful to other researchers who, like us, seek to explore the impact of neonatal exposures on brain development. I advise early career researchers to: * -

Establish a strong mentoring network at multiple levels, including senior researchers, junior mentors, and peers/colleagues. * - Be open minded about future research directions; a research

career is a series of winding paths and not a straight line. * - Persevere! Even when the experiment doesn’t work, or your hypothesis is wrong, or your grant isn’t funded…Develop a growth

mindset and you will always learn and improve from each experience. FUNDING The work in the highlighted manuscript had no funding to report. Katherine Bell is currently funded by the NICHD

(K23HD104000) and the Allen Foundation. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA Katherine A. Bell * Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA,

USA Katherine A. Bell Authors * Katherine A. Bell View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Katherine A.

Bell. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The author declares no competing interests. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PUBLISHER’S NOTE Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to

jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Bell, K.A. ECI Biocommentary:

Katherine Bell. _Pediatr Res_ 94, 858–859 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02704-0 Download citation * Received: 26 May 2023 * Accepted: 05 June 2023 * Published: 14 June 2023 *

Issue Date: September 2023 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02704-0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link

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