Boston Children's Research Research Leadership

Nancy C. Andrews, MD, PhD

Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Boston Children’s Hospital

Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, has been Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital since December 2021 and holds the Helen M. Ranney MD endowed chair. Prior to this appointment, she served for 10 years as Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Duke University. Before moving to Duke she was on the faculty of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she was an attending physician in hematology/oncology, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the George Richards Minot Professor of Pediatrics. Her research laboratory elucidated fundamental aspects of mammalian iron utilization and discovered molecular causes of several human diseases characterized by abnormal handling of iron.

Dr. Andrews’ academic honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine. She is a past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. She is a member of the MIT Corporation, the Institute’s board of trustees. She previously served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is currently Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, overseeing elections and awards.

Dr. Andrews is a member of the Boards of Directors of Novartis (NYSE:NVS), Charles River Laboratories (NYSE:CRL), and Maze Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MAZE) . She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Dyne Therapeutics (NASDAQ:DYN).

Dr. Andrews received her BS and MS degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale (1980), her PhD in biology from MIT (1985), and her MD from Harvard Medical School (1987). She did her internship and residency in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and her fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Andrews and her scientist husband, Bernard Mathey-Prevot, have two adult children who are training in medicine in Boston.

Gus Cervini

Senior Vice President, Research Administration

Gus Cervini is Senior Vice President, Research Administration, at Boston Children’s Hospital. Serving in this role since 2013, Gus directs the administrative infrastructure that supports a research enterprise consisting of about 3,500 Scientific Staff who generated $603 million in annual expenditures in FY2024. Gus has direct line responsibility for the Office of Sponsored Programs, Research Operations, Technology and Innovation Development Office (TIDO), Institutional Review Board (IRB), Research Affairs and Research Cores.  Gus also serves as BCH’s Research Integrity Officer as well as the Institutional Official for the IACUC and IRB.

Prior to this role, he was Senior Director of Administration and Research in the Department of Medicine (DOM) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  Prior to joining the BWH, Gus was Chief of Staff at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard from 2002-06; Project Manager for Institutional Events at the Whitehead Institute 1997-2002; Media Coordinator for the American Psychiatric Association from 1992-97. Gus was named as one of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 (2003) for his role in the founding of the Broad Institute. He served in the United States Army Reserve from 1986-2004. He received his BA from Providence College and MBA from Regis University. 

Irene Abrams

Vice President, Technology Development and New Ventures

Irene is the Vice President of Technology Development and New Ventures at Boston Children’s Hospital, where she leads the hospital’s efforts to translate research discoveries and innovations into new products and treatments to help patients.  Irene oversees the Technology & Innovation Development Office and the Children’s Therapeutic and Medical Device Accelerator, providing translation research resources and support to Children’s faculty and researchers. 

Prior to joining Boston Children’s, Irene was an Executive Director at Partners Healthcare Innovation, the Associate Provost for Innovation at Brandeis University and a Senior Technology Licensing Officer at MIT. Irene currently serves as Director on the board of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

Irene did her undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and her graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University and M.I.T. Irene is the past President of the Massachusetts Association of Technology Transfer Offices, the founder of T3, a networking organization for technology licensing offices from small New England research institutions, and a former Vice President of the Associate of University Technology Managers.

Tatiana Koretskaia, MBA

Vice President, Clinical Research Operations

In this new role, reporting to the Chief Scientific Officer, Tatiana provides the expertise and strategy to lead and reimagine our clinical research operations. She leads and facilitates all aspects of clinical research operations at Boston Children’s Hospital and, in partnership with other senior leaders, she helps us deliver our ambitious research goals. Her focus is on strengthening an environment of extraordinary research results and compassionate, quality care, where investigators are supported in keeping keep us on science’s leading edge, as well as expanding our industry-supported programs. Tatiana provides oversight, guidance and advocacy for the Clinical Research Operations Office that includes the following pillars: Process Improvement, Agreements, Finance, Systems, Regulatory and Education, Support Services, Analytics, Technology and more.

Tatiana has been Vice President of Clinical Research Operations of Boston Children’s Hospitals since May of 2023. Tatiana comes to Boston Children’s from Massachusetts General Hospital, with nearly 20 years of experience in progressive research operations and research finance leadership roles, including the last eight years as Director of Operations and Finance for the Division of Clinical Research. In that role, she successfully led the development and translation of strategic goals into business practices that supported clinical research, while implementing effective operations improvement initiatives across Massachusetts General Hospital and the broader Mass General Brigham organization. Her financial expertise is built on decades of collaboration with unit chiefs, principal investigators, study teams, administrators, and senior leadership to ensure comprehensive financial management, forecasting, and budgetary planning. Tatiana returns to Boston Children’s, where she served as Financial Manager for the Neurobehavioral Studies Laboratory in 2001-2002. Tatiana received her BA from Moscow Cultural College (1996) and her MBA from Suffolk University (2001).

Piotr Sliz, PhD

Vice President and Chief Research Information Officer

Piotr Sliz, PhD is the Vice President and Chief Research Information Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. In this role, he oversees the hospital’s research computing infrastructure, ensuring that advanced technology supports the institution’s pioneering research efforts. Since joining Boston Children’s in 2016, Dr. Sliz has led several key initiatives, including the Pediatric Scholar program, the Children’s Rare Disease Collaborative (CRDC), and a Longwood-wide cryo-electron microscopy (CryoEM) computing effort. He also established the Data Science Program, which has supported over 200 projects in recent years. In 2024, he joined other IT leaders in the successful deployment of EPIC.

As the leader of the CRDC, Dr. Sliz has been instrumental in advancing genomic research to better understand and treat rare pediatric diseases. This initiative brings together the efforts of more than 100 physician scientists, focused on collecting and analyzing genomic data to identify genetic causes and potential treatments for these conditions.

In addition to his administrative roles, Dr. Sliz is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on structural biology, particularly the regulation of non-coding RNA. His group at Harvard determined the crystal structure of the Lin28-let-7 microRNA complex, providing significant insights into gene regulation. Over his career, Dr. Sliz has contributed to the determination of more than 30 structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and has published over 55 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Sliz completed his PhD in X-ray crystallography at the University of Toronto under the mentorship of Professor Emil Pai. He then trained with Professors Stephen Harrison and Don Wiley at Harvard University, where he engaged in numerous leading-edge mechanistic projects.

Dr. Sliz founded and leads SBGrid, a consortium that provides structural biologists with access to structure determination software. The consortium serves a global network of research labs in academia and industry, utilizing techniques such as CryoEM, X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, molecular dynamics, and protein structure prediction. SBGrid also provides training and resources, including workshops and webinars, to help researchers stay at the forefront of structural biology.

Brian J. Lobao

Vice President, Basic Research Operations

Brian is the Vice President supporting the operations of Basic Research at Boston Children’s Hospital. Basic Research Operations facilitates research by supporting the research of over 35 departments, divisions, and programs. This includes over 2,500 principal investigators, research personnel, and technical support personnel. Research Operations is responsible for regulatory compliance and guidance for investigative staff. They also manage, oversee and provide technical support to institutional core facilities. Brian’s department has oversight of the Biosafety, IACUC, and Radioactive Materials committees.

Brian has been at Boston Children’s since 1990 when the Enders Research Labs were expanded. Working with hospital facilities and engineering, Brian has been a key leader in the design, management, construction, and expansion of research lab facilities. He directed the development and opening of the Karp Family Research Labs, Enders Renovations, Boston Children’s at the Center for Life Science, and Boston Children’s at Harvard Institute of Medicine. 

Prior to Boston Children’s, Brian worked for Dupont as a project leader in the development of clinical analyzers that used reactive antibody turbidity to measure drug levels in patients. Before this he worked in biotech as a principal investigator developing antibodies for clinical diagnostic systems. In the early 1980s, his lab produced the first monoclonal antibodies that were sold commercially as research agents. At that time, he was part of the team that developed a series of DNA translation kits used by emerging molecular biologists. Brian’s undergraduate work was at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and the Stockbridge School of Agriculture.