Earlier this week, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research's (UNITAR) hosted its inaugural Global Breastfeeding Education Initiative working session. As an Experts Committee Member for this initiative, along with other representatives from numerous organizations, Dr. Azad shared her expert knowledge and research work in breastfeeding and nutrition in maternal and infant health. Read more here.

​Dr. Meghan Azad and Dr. Liat Shenav published "Using Community Ecology Theory and Computational Microbiome Methods To Study Human Milk as a Biological System" in mSystems. Their review utilized different skillsets to propose a new strategy for studying human milk as a biological system, using methods developed for microbiome research. [PDF] Follow these links to read the Tweetorial and watch the Video Summary.

Dr. Meghan Azad, a Fellow of the CIFAR Humans & the Microbiome program, was featured in CIFAR's REACH magazine in their winter 2022 "The Next Generation" issue. Dr. Azad used the opportunity to highlight the importance of studying breastmilk. "People have been studying breast milk for a long time. But to be honest, not that many people. It’s surprising when you think about it, given how important breast milk is to our species", stated Dr. Azad. "We look for various nutrients, enzymes, hormones, antibodies, immune factors, microbes, metabolites, and so on. The idea is, if we analyze everything in the milk and then look at it all together, we can understand how breast milk influences the microbiome, gut health, immunity and growth. It’s the new way of thinking about human milk as a ‘biological system".