Researcher profile

Deborah Sloboda

Dr Sloboda is a Professor in the Dept of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, Canada, and holds a Canada Research Chair in Perinatal Programming. She completed her PhD training at the University of Toronto, Dept of Physiology in 2001 following which she was a Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Western Australia. In 2006 she was recruited to the Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland in New Zealand where in 2008 she was the Deputy Director of the National Research Centre for Growth and Development at the University of Auckland. In 2009 she held the position of Acting Director of the Centre for one year. In 2012, she left Auckland to take up a Faculty position at McMaster University. Dr Sloboda's laboratory investigates early life impacts on maternal, fetal and placental development and how this mediates the risk of non-communicable disease later in life. Her experimental studies investigate maternal nutrient manipulation on maternal pregnancy adaptations, including the microbiome, placental inflammation and offspring reproductive and metabolic function. In community based health studies, Dr Sloboda engages with expectant mothers and services that support pregnant women. Her Mothers to Babies Study aims to develop a community-based formative knowledge transfer and work program of intervention, to improve diet, and body composition of women before and after conception. She was recently awarded the International Society of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Nick Hales Award for outstanding research contribution to developmental programming, and in 2017 won the Hamilton YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in Science Trade, and Technology. Dr Sloboda is the founding co-President of the DOHaD Society of Canada, and has been the Secretary of the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease since 2013. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. She has published >90 scientific papers in leading scientific journals and contributed to 13 books on the concept of early life origins of health and disease.