Heather Brockway, Ph.D.

Heather Brockway, Ph.D., joined PGNB as a program official in 2024. Her research areas include the developmental origins of human disease, specifically metabolic disorders and obesity; the impact of adverse perinatal events on long-term infant and maternal health; the evolution of human disease; and sex and population disparities in health outcomes.

Dr. Brockway started her NIH career at the Center for Scientific Review. She served as a scientific review officer with the Endocrine and Metabolism Branch, managing the Pathophysiology of Obesity and Metabolic Disease study section. 

Prior to joining NIH in 2022, Dr. Brockway was an assistant professor at the University of Florida, where she focused her research on the placental molecular mechanisms involved in idiopathic preterm birth. This work was a continuation of her postdoctoral research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, through funding from NICHD’s Human Placenta Project, examining the molecular signatures of preterm birth. She also worked as a clinical cytogenetic technologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, conducting diagnostic chromosome analyses on hematological and perinatal samples. 

Dr. Brockway earned her Ph.D. in genetics at the University of Iowa, where she identified a novel role for the COP9 signalosome in the formation of the synaptonemal complex during meiosis in C. elegans. She earned an M.S. at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, examining the genomic evolution of the Relaxin gene cluster in hominoid primates. She received her B.S. in biology and B.A. in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh.