About
About Dr. Fajardo Martinez
Neonatologist, physician-scientist and mentor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Dr. Viviana M. Fajardo Martinez is a neonatologist and physician-scientist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Her research examines how maternal infections and inflammation during pregnancy influence infant health and neurodevelopment, with a focus on the immune and metabolic pathways behind vulnerability and resilience.
Dr. Fajardo Martinez cares for critically ill newborns as a board-certified neonatologist at UCLA and brings that bedside perspective to her science, grounding her research questions in clinically meaningful problems.
Research has been part of her path since her undergraduate training in the biological sciences. Early on, during her neonatology fellowship at UCLA, she collaborated with Dr. Atsushi (Austin) Nakano on developmental biology research focused on cardiac development, metabolism and regeneration, including how glucose metabolism influences the regenerative capacity of the newborn heart.
In 2020 she helped launch the COVID Outcomes in Mother-Infant Pairs (COMP) study at UCLA under the mentorship of Dr. Karin Nielsen, and went on to lead its infant neurodevelopmental component — integrating longitudinal developmental assessments with maternal and infant clinical and immunologic data from birth through early childhood.
Her current work uses well-characterized maternal-infant cohorts, archived biospecimens and detailed developmental data to study the biological consequences of maternal HIV and other infections, integrating immune profiling and metabolomics to find early biomarkers of risk. She mentors undergraduate students and pediatric residents and serves as a clinical mentor to neonatology fellows.
Sources: IMPAACT Network — 2026 Early Career Investigators (opens in a new tab) · UCLA Health — provider profile (opens in a new tab) · UCLA Profiles — faculty research profile (opens in a new tab) · Nakano Lab, UCLA — lab members (opens in a new tab) · UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center — YouTube (May 4, 2018) (opens in a new tab)
2012
Doctor of Medicine (MD)
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine
2012–2015
Residency in Pediatrics
Loyola University
2018
Fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
UCLA School of Medicine, Pediatrics
2015
Pediatrics — American Board of Pediatrics
2020
Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine — American Board of Pediatrics
Principal collaborator
Karin A. Nielsen, MD
Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases, UCLA
Her principal and most intensive research collaborator. Together they launched the COVID Outcomes in Mother-Infant Pairs (COMP) study in 2020, and Dr. Nielsen is a co-author on 9 of the 18 publications listed on this site. Dr. Nielsen's research centers on pediatric infections, particularly HIV and congenital infections.
Dr. Atsushi (Austin) Nakano
Nakano Lab, UCLA — developmental biology
An early collaboration during her neonatology fellowship, on cardiac development and glucose metabolism; Dr. Nakano is a co-author on 4 of the publications listed on this site.
Sources: UCLA Health — Dr. Karin A. Nielsen, provider profile (opens in a new tab) · PubMed (NCBI) (opens in a new tab) · Nakano Lab, UCLA — lab members (opens in a new tab)