About Us

My lab studies animal evolution, with a particular focus on better understanding our most distant animal relatives and the earliest events in the animal tree of life. Our research includes field work to collect poorly known animals, often by SCUBA diving and sometimes with remotely operated underwater vehicles. Lab bench work includes studies of anatomy and genome function. Much of my work is computational- we develop methods and tools for analyzing evolutionary relationships and using those relationships to provide an integrated perspective on genomic and anatomical evolution. I coauthored the book Practical Computing for Biologists to help more biologists become comfortable with computational methods. In addition to his studies of broad patterns of diversity across distantly related animals, my lab also focuses on siphonophores, a group of about 185 species of open-ocean animals that include the Portuguese Man of War. We address basic questions about their structure, growth, diversity, and evolution. I did my undergraduate studies at Stanford University, my graduate studies were with Günter Wagner at Yale, and postdoc studies with Mark Martindale at the University of Hawaii.

Dr. Flannery received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Wellesley College in 1995 before obtaining her M.D. degree from Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland in 2001. She completed internship in medicine and surgery at St. James’s Hospital in Dublin Ireland, and then Internal Medicine residency in the Women’s Health Track at Jacobi Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. She was selected to be Chief Resident in Internal Medicine in 2005-2006. She then went on to the Yale University School of Medicine for her fellowship in Endocrinology & Metabolism. After becoming board certified in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, she pursued a research fellowship at Yale, and worked in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Shulman and Dr. Kitt Petersen on the pathophysiology of Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus. Then she focused her research on the effect of diabetes on endometrial pathology, with the mentorship of Dr. Hugh Taylor. She was awarded an NIH mentored career award then NIH R01 funding. She is an Associate Professor with dual appointments in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences (Reproductive Endocrinology) as well as Internal Medicine (Endocrinology). Her research involves studies on the link between obesity and endometrial pathology, including endometrial cancer and infertility. She sees patients with diabetes and endocrine disorders, with a specialty interest in diabetes prevention, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and transgender hormone therapy.

Dr Galerneau was born and raised in Canada where she completed her medical education including a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology and fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine. After practicing perinatalogy for 12 years at University of British Columbia in Canada, she joined the MFM team at Yale University.

Her scholarly interests include: undergraduate medical education in the field of reproduction, graduate education in maternal-fetal-medicine, particularly Ob&Gyn ultrasound, obstetrical and pelvic ultrasound, prenatal diagnosis, fetal assessment and maternal complications of pregnancy.

Dr. Galerneau is very active in medical education and has experience facilitating faculty development sessions on teaching clinical reasoning. Until 2016, she directed the Reproductive Medicine Module for second-year medical students, which had the development of clinical reasoning skills as one of the major learning goals. Dr. Galerneau is also the co-director of the Across the Lifespan Master Course in the new medical school curriculum. She has published and presented internationally with Dr. Janet Hafler on clinical reasoning.

Dr. Seth Guller, trained as a biochemist, joined the Yale Fertility Center as Director of the Reproductive Endocrinology Laboratory in 2007. The function of this clinical laboratory is to provide rapid hormone analysis for patients as well as test results for research studies. Dr. Guller strives to implement new tests for the recently acquired Roche Cobas e411 analyzer to improve the quality of patient care. He has also directed a research laboratory for the last 21 years. Dr. Guller has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers.

Akiko Iwasaki received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 1998, and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health (USA) (1998-2000). She joined Yale University (USA) as a faculty in 2000, and currently is an Investigator of the HHMI and Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Department of Immunobiology, and of Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology. Akiko Iwasaki’s research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces. Her laboratory is interested in how innate recognition of viral infections lead to the generation of adaptive immunity, and how adaptive immunity mediates protection against subsequent viral challenge.

Carolyn Mazure is the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor in Women's Health Research and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. She created and directs Yale's interdisciplinary research center on health and gender — Women's Health Research at Yale.

After three years at the National Institutes of Health and fellowship training at Yale, Dr. Mazure was invited to join the Yale faculty — becoming an active clinician, a researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Director of Psychiatry's Adult Inpatient Program at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Her contributions in women's health began with her own internationally recognized research in depression. Focusing on the gender differences in this disorder, she was the first to demonstrate how stress is a more potent pathway to depression in women than men and use these findings to inform treatment interventions.

Understanding the value of uncovering gender differences in depression, combined with recognizing that such data are sorely lacking in other fields, she created Women's Health Research at Yale. Since its inception in 1998, the center has been recognized as a national model for launching research on the influence of sex and gender on human health, translating findings into practice, and providing mentored training.

Dr. Mazure is a member of the Advisory Committee for the NIH Office for Research on Women's Health. She has provided testimony to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on the importance of women's health research, served on the planning committee for the First White House Conference on Mental Health and as a fellow for the U.S. Congress' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

She also a consultant to the Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science and a member of the Advisory Board of the Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT), an interdisciplinary initiative to foster greater innovation in medical technology.

She has been an invited speaker at diverse venues, such as NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, and has been a featured expert on ABC's "Prime Time Live" and in the BBC documentary "The Science of Stress." Her books include "Does Stress Cause Psychiatric Illness?" and "Understanding Depression in Women: Applying Empirical Research to Practice and Policy."

Dr. Mazure served as Associate Dean for Faculty at Yale Medical School, and was awarded the Stephen Fleck Clinician and Teacher Award and the Sidney J. Blatt Award for excellence in clinical care, teaching and research - both from Yale. Among her other honors, Dr. Mazure is the recipient of the Marion Spencer Fay Award from the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership, the American Psychological Association Distinguished Leadership Award from the Committee on Women in Psychology, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from the National Organization for Women, and a U.S. Public Health Fellowship.

Dr. Lubna Pal is the director of two clinical programs at Yale Reproductive Endocrinology: the Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) Program and the Menopause Program. Dedicated to helping couples conceive, Dr. Pal develops individualized treatment plans to help infertile couples overcome specific fertility-related challenges they may face. “It is a privilege to assist couples achieving healthy pregnancies,” she says.

In 1988, Dr. Pal received her MBBS from Dow Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan. She received postgraduate training in the United Kingdom, becoming a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1994. She completed a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility at Massachusetts General Hospital, and then made her way to Connecticut in 1997 for an Ob/Gyn residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH). Ten years later, after completing a second fellowship, a master's in Clinical Research and post-doctoral work at Yeshiva University in New York, she returned to Yale as an assistant professor with a clinical and research focus on infertility and reproductive aging.

In addition to menopause and PCOS, Dr. Pal’s clinical interests include diminished ovarian reserve, obesity-related reproductive dysfunction, osteoporosis and low bone mineral density, menstrual disturbances, fibroids and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Her research work focuses on the role of vitamin D in reproduction.

With four offices in Connecticut, Dr. Pal and the Yale Fertility Center are positioned to offer new research and treatment options to patients across the region. Dr. Pal is board certified in Ob/Gyn and Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility. She is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Endocrine Society and the North American Menopause Society.

Professor Rudnick is a graduate of Antioch College, where he received a B.S. in Chemistry in 1968. He performed graduate studies in the enzymology of amino acid racemases in the laboratory of Robert H. Abeles in the Graduate Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University, receiving a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1974. His graduate studies led to an understanding of the structure and mechanism of proline racemase that was confirmed by the crystal structure of a homologous protein in 2006. From 1973-1975, Professor Rudnick performed postdoctoral research on lactose permease with H. Ronald Kaback at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. This work provided a greater understanding of binding and transport reactions using photoaffinity reagents and substrate analogs. In 1975, he left Roche to become an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1980 and Professor in 1991.

Professor Rudnick’s research at Yale has focused on the mechanism and structure of mammalian serotonin transporter (SERT). He developed a system of platelet plasma membrane vesicles with which to study the bioenergetics and mechanism of transport. These studies provided an understanding of the coupling of ion gradients to serotonin accumulation and also identified SERT as the molecular target for the antidepressant imipramine and the psychostimulant MDMA (ecstasy).

Beginning in the 1990s, Professor Rudnick’s laboratory has been studying the molecular characteristics of SERT and other neurotransmitter transporters expressed in cultured cells. These studies led to the identification of the serotonin binding site in SERT and of regions in the protein undergoing conformational changes during transport. The availability of a crystal structure for a homologous bacterial transporter in 2005 allowed Professor Rudnick and his colleagues to use the conformational changes to propose a conformational mechanism of transport that is gaining wide acceptance. Because SERT is structurally related to many other transporters, the proposed mechanism is likely to apply to transporters functioning in many diverse biological systems.

In addition to these mechanistic studies, Professor Rudnick’s laboratory has been investigating a spontaneously occurring SERT mutant associated with several psychiatric disorders. The mutation apparently inhibits removal of a phosphate group added to SERT by cGMP-dependent protein kinase. The mechanism by which this phosphate increases SERT activity is an active area of investigation.

Dr. Reshef Tal is Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine and a Women’s Reproductive Health Research (WRHR) Scholar. He obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Sackler School of Medicine in Tel-Aviv University, Israel. Following a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Lunenfeld Research Institute at the University of Toronto, he completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Maimonides Medical Center, NY, followed by a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Yale University.

During his fellowship, Dr. Tal was accepted into the Women’s Reproductive Health Research (WRHR) scholar program, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded physician-scientist career development program aimed at fostering the growth of young obstetrician-gynecologists into established, independent investigators in the field. His laboratory is focused on investigating the role of bone marrow-derived stem cells and immune cells in embryo implantation and pregnancy maintenance with the ultimate goal of developing new therapies for patients with infertility. His clinical interests include infertility, IVF, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) and endometrial pathologies including Asherman’s syndrome, thin endometrium and implantation failure.

Dr. Tal is the recipient of many research awards including the New England Fertility Society/Ferring Fellow Research Award, the Society of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility (SREI)/American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Fellow Research Award, Patterson Trust Fellow Award, Society for Reproductive Investigation (SRI) President's Plenary Award and the Albert S. McKern Award. Dr. Tal has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles, authored five book chapters and also edited a book (Antimullerian Hormone: Biology, Role in Ovarian Function and Clinical Significance). In addition, he serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Reproductive Biology & Endocrinology.

Dr. Taylor is the Anita O'Keeffe Young Professor and Chair, Department of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is also Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental biology at Yale University. His clinical interests include IVF, infertility, endometriosis, implantation, menopause, uterine anomalies and DES exposure.

Dr. Hugh Taylor received his undergraduate training at Yale University and received his medical degree from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale. His postdoctoral training included a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility as well as a fellowship in Molecular Biology, both at Yale.

Dr. Taylor is a board certified specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology and in Reproductive Endocrinology. His clinical research centers on implantation, endometriosis and menopause. His basic science research focuses on uterine development, the regulation of developmental gene expression by sex steroids, endocrine disruption, and on stem cells. He is a recipient of ten National Institutes of Health research grants and directs The Yale Center for Reproductive Biology. Dr. Taylor has published more than 300 articles and in leading medical journals. He is the Editor-In-Chief of Reproductive Sciences.  He has served as President of the Society for Reproductive Investigation and will be president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in 2021.  He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.  

Günter P. Wagner is an evolutionary geneticist with training in biochemcial engineering, zoology and mathematics from the University of Vienna, Austria. He spent six postdoctoral years at the Max Planck Institutes for Biophysical Chemistry (Goettingen, Germany) and for Developmental Biology (Tübingen, Germany). His academic career started at the University of Vienna and in 1991 he received a call to assume a full professorship at the Biology Department at Yale. From 1996 to 2001 he was Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, and in 2010 his lab moved to the Systems Biology Institute at Yale's West Campus.

Dr. Wagner's research interest is the evolution of gene regulation as it pertains to the origin of evolutionary novelties. In particular the lab is focusing on the evolution of the endometrial stromal cells in the context of the evolutionary origin of pregnancy. Another focus of my lab is the developmental basis of character identity, as for instance in the case of digit identity of birds.

In 1992 Dr. Wagner received the MacArthur Fellowship for my research on the developmental basis of homology and in 1997 he was elected both to become corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2010 Dr, Wagner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.