About Nazanin Kazemi Butterfield

Nazanin Kazemi was born in Iran and raised in the small town of Borujerd on the foothills of the Zagros mountains where her ancestors had lived for generations. Determined to give Nazanin a better future limited only by her own imagination, Nazanin’s parents moved their family to the United States after winning the Green Card Lottery. Starting over with only a few words of English between the three of them, Nazanin and her parents slowly built a life in their new country. Having witnessed the selflessness of her parents in her own upbringing, and in the way that they always helped others even when they needed just as much help themselves, instilled in Nazanin a determination to use her opportunities and privileges to serve others.

Nazanin attended college at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) as a first-generation college student. UMKC opened many doors for Nazanin, giving her the opportunity to work with leading scientists at The Stowers Institute and John Hopkins Medical School. Knowing that she wanted to serve others through her strengths in leadership and the sciences, Nazanin’s vast research experiences motivated her to pursue training as a medical scientist. After graduating summa cum laude from UMKC, she started her MD-PhD training in the Mayo Clinic Medical Scientist Training program at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Minnesota. At Mayo Clinic, Nazanin’s passion for public service was matched by the institution’s dedication to the needs of every patient.

In the lab of Professor Svetomir Markovic, Nazanin focused on the inflammatory mediators responsible for activation of maternal immunity just before labor and in pregnancy complications which are a major cause of premature birth. Nazanin’s work has identified cell-free DNA shed from the placenta as a key mediator of inflammation, which may serve as a therapeutic target to prevent premature birth and preeclampsia, leading causes of maternal and fetal death worldwide. During the last year of her PhD, Nazanin pursued international collaboration at the University of Geneva as a US Fulbright Scholar to expand her research on the connection between the placenta and the maternal immune system. Working with Professor Marie Cohen’s lab, Nazanin studied particles shed by the placenta in healthy and complicated pregnancies to determine which factors contribute to complications. After serving as a Fulbright Scholar, Nazanin successfully defended her PhD thesis in immunology and graduated as an MD-PhD from Mayo Clinic in May 2023. She is currently a pediatric resident at Children's Hospital of Colorado where she continues to study disease processes relevant to the health of premature newborns.