Meet the Head of Research at Tia, Dr. Ava Mainieri

Ever wondered where all those factoids and science-backed goodness is coming from at Tia? Meet Dr. Ava Mainieri.

Where did you grow up, what brought you to NYC, and what drew you to becoming a researcher?

My father is a theoretical physicist, so I grew up near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to the creation of the atomic bomb. We then moved to Copenhagen, Denmark where he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute, and finally we moved to Northern Virginia. My parents knew from an early age that I loved science, so they let me order a fruit fly kit from Carolina Biological. I learned how to make the flies sleepy using ether and separate the pigments in their eyes — what I did not learn was how to properly put the caps back on the fly bottles. My poor parents had to deal with a fruit fly infestation for an entire month! After graduating from Cornell University in 2012, I worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering under Dr. Jennifer Zallen for two years in her molecular biology lab. There, I co-authored two papers focused on how cancer cells move throughout the body. In August of 2014, I joined Dr. David Haig’s lab at Harvard University and just completed my PhD. My thesis focused on a phenomenon called genomic imprinting (a form of epigenetics) and its role in female reproductive health and pregnancy.

What do you find most challenging/confusing about navigating healthcare?

Throughout my Ph.D. I was surprised to find that, apart from reproductive health concerns, medicine does not pay a lot of attention to females specifically. Instead, there is a one-size-fits all approach to clinical research. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and are at least twice as likely to have chronic pain conditions. The immune system is also thought to be behind sex-specific responses to vaccines: females develop higher antibody responses and have more frequent reactions to vaccines. There was even a 2014 paper proposing developing male and female versions of flu vaccines. And despite an abundance of evidence showing that research conducted on males cannot be extrapolated to females (and that there are plentiful differences between them in everything from drug responses to risk factors for various diseases) many clinicians still don’t routinely analyze and report such differences. There are vast medical data gaps to be filled in, but the past 20 years have demonstrably shown that women are not just smaller men. So why aren’t we actively researching this? At Tia, I believe that we finally are!

What is something you’ve learned about health and/or the healthcare system that you want to share with others?

A common metaphor in medicine is that the body is a machine designed for certain functions and that when things go awry, they can be treated in the same way a mechanic might fix a car: tighten some screws, add some oil, and adjust the tire pressure. The human body, however, is a fascinating bundle of compromises shaped by natural selection. This leaves us vulnerable to diseases and disorder, but also makes us amazingly resilient. Our bodies can cope with migrations and major environmental challenges, adapting physically and emotionally! I am constantly in awe of the human body the more I learn about it.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself over the last decade?

Don’t be afraid to ask that silly question because curiosity will always be rewarded with knowledge. Some of the questions I’ve been asked led me to do a project on esters (take an acid and an alcohol, shake it up, and the end project is something stinky) or set up a camera so I could watch a tiny fruit fly walk across a table. There is no better preparation for a scientific life.

Why’d you decide to be a part of Tia?

Health care tech should be about identifying a problem and making a solution that helps real people! Tia opens up a new door at the intersection between technology and female health — the company is truly patient-centric.

To empower women, you have to make it easy for her to take care of her body! The patient-doctor relationship is among the most sacred in the world because we surrender our modesty and trust our physicians with our most intimate needs and vulnerabilities. In return, Tia gives us science, expertise, respect, and compassion.

Carolyn and Felicity’s goals reverberated with me and I wanted to be a part of their movement from day one. Even before Tia had a clinic I helped write “Tia Talks” where we broke down how stress can affect your sex drive and why the clitoris is a magical organ. They have always wanted to give women agency into their health care and I too believe that women should be given access to the information, community, and care they need to make confident decisions about their health and wellness.

As a scientist, how do you approach female health differently than a doctor?

My PhD is in evolutionary biology and epigenetics, so I use these two processes to study how some of the health problems we face today arose. This approach will not solve all of our entrenched and deep-rooted health challenges, but it does offer a new, more holistic way of viewing individual and population health from both research and practice standpoints. I want to offer a broader and more inclusive approach to medicine and health, asking new questions about both the immediate and developmental causes and explanations of poor health. I view human health and development through a lens that assumes that humans are highly diverse with a biology that unfolds in a context rather than in predictable unvarying ways. Scientists recognize that for almost any human trait, there is a broad range within which wellness, growth, and development can thrive.

Do you have a health goal you are working towards?

With a foundation in evolutionary and computational biology, my goal is to draw a dynamic hormonal portrait for every woman. Like each of us, it would be a multi-faceted and dynamic entity that ebbs and flows. Hormones are the building blocks of our cycles and transitions — like puberty, ovulation, periods, pregnancies, and menopause. Understanding our personalized hormonal milieu is a key to understanding our health! If we don’t know ourselves, how can we serve ourselves?

What does being a “well-woman” mean to you?

Arming myself with science-based advice!