Rate My Professor Shakila Thangaratinam

Professor Shakila Thangaratinam FRCOG, MD, PhD, FRCP Edin, FMedSci is the Executive Dean of the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences, Professor of Women's Health, and University Strategy Advisor for Global Engagement and Partnerships at the University of Liverpool. She serves as an NIHR Senior Investigator and Consultant Obstetrician at Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust. Elected Vice President (International) of the Academy of Medical Sciences, she has a distinguished career marked by founding two WHO Collaborating Centres for Women’s Health, first at Queen Mary University of London and later at the University of Birmingham, where she led the Maternal and Reproductive Health Theme and co-directed Patient Safety Research. She previously held R&D Director roles for Women's Health at NHS trusts in Birmingham and London, and founded networks such as the Dame Hilda Lloyd Network and Katherine Twining Network. At Liverpool, she leads the women's health theme in the NIHR Northwest Coast Applied Research Collaboration and chairs the national NIHR Collaborative Action Group on Health of Women.

Her research portfolio focuses on enhancing maternal and perinatal health globally and nationally through clinical trials, advanced evidence synthesis methods like individual participant data meta-analyses, living systematic reviews, and network meta-analyses. Key areas include prediction and prevention of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, seizures in pregnant women with epilepsy, lifestyle interventions for obesity, maternity safety, and addressing race/ethnic inequalities. She leads major international collaborations: IPPIC network across 21 countries involving 5.5 million pregnancies, i-WIP with 16 countries and 60,000 pregnancies, and PregCOV-19 living databases. Holding grants such as the NIHR Senior Investigator renewal (2024-2029) and EpiSafe (2023-2028), her 279 peer-reviewed publications boast an h-index of 72 and over 34,000 citations. Influential works include 'Effects of lifestyle interventions in pregnancy on gestational diabetes: individual participant data and network meta-analysis' (BMJ, 2026), 'Clinical manifestations, risk factors, and maternal and perinatal outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 in pregnancy' (BMJ, 2020), and 'Pulse oximetry screening for critical congenital heart defects in asymptomatic newborn babies' (Lancet, 2012). Her contributions have informed over 130 policy documents and guidelines on COVID-19 in pregnancy, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, pulse oximetry in newborns, and epilepsy in pregnancy.