UCSD BEACON Congratulates First 2026 Pilot Award Recipients!

Elsie G. Ross, MD, MS, RPVI, FAHA
Development and Evaluation of Reflex Lp(a) Testing in Patients with Peripheral Artery Disease

Dr. Elsie G. Ross is a vascular surgeon and NIH-funded physician-scientist whose work sits at the intersection of clinical care, artificial intelligence, and applied informatics. She is an Associate Professor of Surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine, with joint appointments in Biomedical Informatics and a role as Medical Director of Surgical Informatics. Dr. Ross's research focuses on applying machine learning and large-scale data analytics to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and equity of care for patients with peripheral artery disease and other vascular conditions.

Marni Jacobs, PhD, MPH
Lipoprotein(a) in pregnancy: Associations with preeclampsia and differences across gestation

Dr. Marni Jacobs is an Assistant Professor and perinatal epidemiologist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. She received her MPH with a concentration in Epidemiology from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, followed by a PhD in Public Health with an emphasis in Epidemiology from the University of California, San Diego in association with San Diego State University. Following her PhD, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Tulane University primarily focused on lifetime stress and reproduction. Her research program centers on identifying predictors of poor birth outcomes using easily obtained clinical measures, particularly those that are amenable to intervention, with a specific interest in lipids and lipidomics in pregnancy.

Development and Evaluation of Reflex Lp(a) Testing in Patients with Peripheral Artery Disease

Elsie G. Ross, MD, MS, RPVI, FAHA

Despite the availability of important cardiovascular risk factor testing, many patients with peripheral artery disease never receive it. This creates missed opportunities for targeted prevention and treatment. This study aims to address this gap by leveraging health informatics and institutional partnerships to build automated, sustainable testing pathways directly into clinical workflows.

Working collaboratively with UC San Diego Health's clinical informatics and population health teams, this project integrates diagnostic data sources with the electronic health record to trigger guideline-recommended testing at clinically relevant moments, aiming to do so with minimal additional burden on providers or patients. The approach is designed to be equitable by design, reducing reliance on individual provider awareness and reaching populations who have historically been undertested.

The pilot will generate foundational infrastructure and preliminary data to support a larger, multi-site implementation study aimed at closing persistent gaps in cardiovascular care.

Lipoprotein(a) in pregnancy: Associations with preeclampsia and differences across gestation

Marni Jacobs, PhD, MPH

This project aims to characterize Lp(a) in pregnancy with a primary focus on identifying differences in Lp(a) among those with a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP) compared to those who remain normotensive.

Preeclampsia and other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are a leading cause of both maternal and neonatal morbidity, and are strong independent risk factors for maternal cardiovascular disease years after pregnancy. Increased lipid levels have been reported in patients with preeclampsia, yet, despite lipoprotein(a) being recognized as a substantial independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, associations between Lp(a) and preeclampsia remain understudied and poorly understood.

This project will use samples from an existing obstetric biobank linked with detailed clinical outcomes to characterize Lp(a) in patients with and without HDP, both around the time of delivery and longitudinally.

We are very excited to continue these projects with Drs. Ross and Jacobs to push the envelope in our understanding of Lp(a). Thank you to all who applied, and we look forward to next year's proposals.