Esther Baart

Esther Baart is head of the laboratory for Reproductive Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam. She graduated from Wageningen University in 1998 with an MSc degree in Cell Biology. She continued as a junior researcher, working on both female and male mammalian meiosis, and developed a murine model system for studying fertilization and embryo development after intracytoplasmic sperm injection. She went on to obtain her PhD degree at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Erasmus MC. Between 2005-2008 she worked as a clinical embryologist and researcher at the University Medical Center, Utrecht. In 2008, she moved back to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Erasmus MC, where she is currently working as head of the IVF laboratory and assistant professor. She brings a long standing research interest in embryo aneuploidy and chromosomal mosaicism to the consortium, with several well-cited papers showing that chromosomal abnormalities are the main factor that limits the success of IVF. By successfully establishing a research program at the intersection of clinical embryology and fundamental developmental biology, she aims to understand the origins of these abnormalities and the impact on human development and IVF success.
These central questions are addressed using cutting edge stem cell, cell biology and molecular biology techniques and insights, together with leading experts in these fields. Using human embryos donated for research, advanced embryo models, imaging techniques and innovative single cell approaches, we explore embryonic mechanisms to understand chromatin and chromosome behaviour in human embryos and how this impacts development.