Romina Fakhraei is an Epidemiology PhD candidate under the supervision of Drs. Deshayne Fell and Darine El-Chaâr. She has been working with the OMNI Group since 2014 and most recently was the lead coordinator for The COPE Network study and the UNIVERSE-OB study. Ms. Fakhraei’s research primarily focuses on infection and immunization during pregnancy. As part of her Master’s thesis, she established a large provincial investigation of over 600,000 births in Ontario to investigate the safety of pertussis vaccination in pregnancy. She was the recipient of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine’s “Epidemiology Program Award of Excellence” acknowledging exceptional performance as an MSc candidate, and “Best Thesis Award” for the most outstanding thesis in the Epidemiology program.  The overarching aim of her doctoral thesis is to determine the optimal strategy for preventing Group B Streptococcus (GBS) disease in Ontario infants. Specifically, she will be evaluating the extent of infant GBS disease in Ontario and the likely benefits of maternal vaccination over the current strategy of screening and intrapartum antibiotics to prevent infant infection.