Professor Abigail Fowden

Abigail Fowden is Professor Emerita of Perinatal Physiology in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. She was an undergraduate at Girton College and graduated with a first class degree in Physiology in 1975. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1979 and immediately joined the staff of the Department of Physiology. Since then, she has held several academic positions before being promoted to a personal chair in 2002. She obtained the ScD degree in 2001. From 2015-2019 she was Head of the School of the Biological Sciences at the University. Her research is in reproductive biology and takes an integrated comparative, multidisciplinary approach from the gene to the whole systems level. Her specific research interests are in the endocrine factors controlling feto-placental growth and development, particularly during late pregnancy. The aims of her research are two-fold: first, to determine how hormones and other environmental cues regulate feto-placental development, and secondly, to establish how our experiences during early life alter the risk of developing endocrine and metabolic dysfunction in adulthood.