Jennifer L. Herington, Ph.D.

Jennifer Herington received her PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Systemic Physiology at Southern Illinois University in 2010. Her background involves training in reproductive physiology focused on understanding the endometrial changes necessary for successful onset and maintenance of pregnancy, inflammation-driven dysfunctional endometrial phenotypes and perinatal development. Her expertise includes embryo implantation, as well as uterine myometrial and cervical physiology during pregnancy and labor. Her research has led to the development of high-throughput assays for screening small-compound libraries, and in vivo tools for pre-clinical testing of promising therapeutic regulators of uterine contractility. She is the recipient of a Vanderbilt Faculty Research Scholar Award and is the principle investigator of grants funded by the National Institute of Health and AMAG Pharmaceuticals. She has served as the primary mentor and trained a postdoctoral research fellow, maternal-fetal medicine clinical fellow, graduate student, six undergraduate student researchers, as well as provided research opportunities for several disadvantaged high school and undergraduate students in the Vanderbilt ASPIRNAUT Program.