Leadership Team
Roger B. Eaton, Ph.D.
Director, UMass New England Newborn Screening Program
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Eaton has served as the Director of the New England Newborn Screening Program since 1998 and has been with the program since 1991. He is responsible for leading all aspects of the program, including policies, long-range goals, laboratory QA/QC activities, implementation and use of new technologies, data system development, and determining research and development priorities. Under Dr. Eaton’s direction, Massachusetts became one of the first states to apply tandem mass spectrometry to their newborn screening tests.
Dr. Eaton is an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the UMass Chan Medical School. He received his master’s and Ph.D. from the State University of New York. He has authored or co-authored more than sixteen articles in the last ten years on a number of subjects relevant to newborn screening, such as long-term follow-up for individuals diagnosed with newborn screening conditions, or the effects of expanded newborn screening for biochemical genetic disorders.
Dr. Eaton is a member of the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the International Society of Newborn Screening (ISNS) and serves on a number of workgroups and committees. He also participates on the Newborn Screening Translational Research Network (NBSTRN) Newborn Screening Laboratories Workgroup and the Health Information Technology Workgroup for the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children.
Anne Marie Comeau, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, UMass New England Newborn Screening Program
Professor of Pediatrics, UMass Chan Medical School
Dr. Comeau has been with the New England Newborn Screening Program since 1988 and serves as the Deputy Director. In her role, she directs the scientific program focused on the development and evaluation of emerging technologies applicable to screening newborns for genetic and infectious disorders. She also consults with scientists and clinical specialists in the development and clinical interpretation of new screening assays.
Dr. Comeau is a professor in the department of pediatrics at the UMass Chan Medical School. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University and held a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a prolific author/co-author in the area of newborn screening and genetics. Dr. Comeau is the Principal Investigator of one of two CDC grant awards to study the feasibility of newborn screening for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) detection and has overseen the implementation of the pilot SCID Newborn Screening program for Massachusetts.
Dr. Comeau was awarded the 2013 Harry Hannon Laboratory Improvement Award in Newborn Screening by the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), in part due to her research efforts on SCID detection. She is a member of the APHL, the International Society of Newborn Screening, and the Council of State and Laboratory Epidemiologists.