Rate My Professor Rachel Tribe

Professor Rachel Tribe is Professor of Maternal and Perinatal Health in the Department of Women and Children’s Health at King’s College London, within the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. Appointed Vice Dean for Research and Impact in September 2023, she also serves as Faculty Research Integrity Champion and leads the Tribe Lab, a multidisciplinary team of scientists, doctors, midwives, and bioinformaticians dedicated to translational research on preterm birth and other pregnancy complications. Tribe earned a BSc Special Dual Honours in Physiology and Zoology from the University of Sheffield in 1988 and a PhD from the University of London (United Medical and Dental Schools) in 1992, investigating the role of dietary salt intake and sodium transport in asthma. As an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow, she researched smooth muscle intracellular calcium regulation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA. Her career at King’s College London encompasses leading global health initiatives, including the PRECISE Spontaneous Preterm Birth Study in Kenya, The Gambia, and Mozambique, and serving as Co-Investigator on the PRECISE Network. Research specializations include uterine ion channel physiology, interactions between the female reproductive tract innate immune system and microbiome during pregnancy, biomarker discovery for preterm birth prediction, and interventions like combining breastfeeding with probiotics for infant gut health. She has secured funding from the MRC, Borne Foundation, Action Medical Research, Rosetrees Trust, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, and Tommy’s Charity for projects such as decidual stromal cell therapy for preterm birth prevention (2026-2028) and MOBILEAir on maternal air pollution exposure (2024-2026).