Christy McKinney, PhD, MPH. Dr. McKinney is the Program Director and Principal Investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. She is an Associate Professor in Craniofacial Medicine, Pediatrics and Adjunct Associate Professor in Oral Health Sciences at the UW. Christy is an epidemiologist and her research interests are focused on nutrition and environmental exposures that affect oral health, early feeding, and dental and craniofacial conditions. She has over 15 years of clinical and translational research experience in many settings including the USA, Thailand, Ghana, and India.
Joana Cunha-Cruz, DDS, MPH, PhD. Dr. Cunha-Cruz is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Oral Health Sciences in the School of Dentistry and Department of Health Services in the School of Public Health. Joana uses oral epidemiology, behavioral and implementation sciences and evidence based practice methods to understand and improve dental practice and systems for better health and health equity.
Kelly Evans, MD. Dr. Evans is an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Evans’s research investigates sleep and breathing in children born with craniofacial conditions, with the goal of improving outcomes in patients with conditions that affect airway function. Her current research focuses on children born with micrognathia, glossoptosis and cleft palate, also known as Robin Sequence.
Carrie Heike, MD, MS. Dr. Heike is an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Her research focuses on answering clinic and patient-oriented research questions related to craniofacial microsomia, cleft lip and palate, and craniosynostosis. Her work focuses on multidisciplinary collaboratives to develop new evaluations tools and to assess treatment outcomes for children with craniofacial conditions.
Philippe Hujoel, DDS, MSD, MS, PhD. Dr. Hujoel is a Professor of Oral Health Sciences in the UW School of Dentistry. Philippe’s research interests are focused on the etiology and treatment of oral and craniofacial diseases with a focus on nutrition and low carbohydrate diets, harmful effects of diagnostic radiation and evidence-based methodology and applications.
Sara Kinter, PhC, CCC-SLP. Ms. Kinter is a doctoral candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Washington and the lead speech-language pathologist with the Craniofacial Center at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She has over 15 years’ experience in the evaluation and management of speech and resonance disorders related to cleft palate/lip and other craniofacial conditions. Her research applies epidemiologic principles to improve our understanding of the association between anatomical structure and speech function with specific interest in speech/resonance changes following surgical interventions.
Frankline Onchiri, PhD. Dr. Onchiri is a UW-trained biostatistician based at Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) and the UW Institute of Translational Health Sciences. He is a former NIH Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholar, whose work involved applying biostatistical methods to clinical research in Kenya. He is the lead statistical analyst for a wide range of translational, interdisciplinary pediatric clinical research studies in the USA, Kenya and beyond. He oversees biostatistics operations at SCRI’s Biostatistics Epidemiology and Analytics for Research (BEAR) Core.
Kathryn (Katie) Porter, JD, MPH is a Research Scientist at the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. She is Director of the Research Bioethics Consultation Service at the University of Washington’s Institute of Translational Health Sciences and a clinical ethics consultant at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She is a member of the IRB at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Her interests include research ethics and improvement of the informed consent process.