Pediatric Science Days Set for April

Devaskar is the Physician-in-Chief, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and assistant vice chancellor of Children’s Health, UCLA Health, and is the Executive Director of the UCLA Children’s Discovery and Innovation Institute. She is attending neonatologist at the Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA, and is a former SLU faculty member, serving as a neonatologist at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital under Keenan’s directorship from 1981 to 1995.

During her tenure at SLU, she served as the director of the Pediatric Research Institute from 1990 to 1993, with a secondary appointment as professor of pharmacologic and physical sciences.

She was subsequently recruited to the University of Pittsburgh, where she served as chief of pediatrics at Magee Women’s Hospital and director of neonatology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh from 1995 to 1999.

Since joining the faculty at UCLA in 1999, Devaskar has served in multiple administrative roles, including as director of neonatology at Mattel Children’s Hospital and vice-chair for research in the Department of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine. She currently serves as the assistant vice chancellor of children's health, and executive director, UCLA Children’s Discovery and Innovation Institute (CDI).

She is also the Director of the Neonatal Research Center at UCLA, and is the principal investigator of the UCLA Child Health Research Career Development Program and the Human and Molecular Development Training grant.

Devaskar’s research program studies the role of pregnancy exposures to the long-term outcome of babies. Her program focuses on premature and growth-restricted babies, the nutrition they receive while in the womb and soon after birth, and the propensity of these babies to develop adult-onset conditions, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and Alzheimer’s disease.

Her research is supported by various National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, and she is principal investigator on two NIH-funded institutional training grants (T32 and K12).

Devaskar is a member of the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council, National Institutes of Health. She is the former Chair of the NICHD-Maternal and Child Health Committee and is a member of the NIH-Human and Embryology Study Section.

She has authored over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Devaskar has served as the editor-in-chief of Pediatric Research, and she is an editorial board member of the American Journal of Physiology Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Devaskar has a particular interest in academic development and serves on multiple UCLA, national and international committees, including as president of the American Pediatric Society and chair of the Program Committee for the Pediatric Academic Societies, among others.

She was a member of the Perinatal-Neonatal Subsection of the American Board of Pediatrics and is a past president of the Mid-West Society for Pediatric Research.

These positions have allowed her to help shape the careers of pediatric fellows and junior faculty locally and nationally.