The main goal of Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri’s research is to understand the aetiology of pregnancy complications so that effective treatments can be devised to improve the cardio-metabolic health and wellbeing of women and their families. These complications include abnormal birth weight, gestational diabetes, and preeclampsia, which have a combined effect of 15% on pregnancies in developed countries. Her work explores metabolic and cardiovascular adaptations to pregnancy and the role of the placenta by employing mouse models of environmental exposures (undernutrition, diet-induced obesity and hypoxia) and genetics (constitutive, conditional and knock-down). The goals of her research are to: 1) determine how the environment of the mother affects the placental phenotype and thereby regulates fetal nutrition, growth, and offspring outcome, and 2) examine how the placenta influences maternal metabolism and cardiovascular function via its endocrine function. She collaborates extensively with others using different experimental animal models and use samples donated by women across the globe to understand how we may translate our findings to improve human, and more broadly, mammalian health. Taking an integrative approach, by applying methods at the whole body, organ, structural, molecular and cellular levels, she hopes to identify diagnostic indicators and therapies for pregnancy complications, and understand the mechanistic basis of a poor pregnancy environment and increased risk to the offspring and mother post-pregnancy of subsequently developing type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.