Toby Yanowitz, MD, MS, is a member of the UPMC Newborn Medicine Program at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. She is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an assistant investigator at Magee-Womens Research Institute. 

Dr. Yanowitz received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. She received her medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y. She completed her pediatrics residency at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and her neonatology fellowship at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island. She obtained a master’s degree in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

Dr. Yanowitz's research has focused on the use of noninvasive techniques to study cerebral blood flow and cardiac function in premature newborns and fetuses in order to determine if there is a hemodynamic basis to perinatal brain injury in general, and periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) specifically. Dr. Yanowitz has been the site-PI for multiple multicenter clinical studies in the NICU at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, including (among others): 

1) “Should very low birth weight infants feed during indomethacin or ibuprophen treatment of a patent ductus arteriosus,” a randomized study of feeding vs. NPO during medical treatment of a patent ductus arteriosus

2) a Phase III study of the use of an anti-staphylococcal antibody (Pagibaximab) to prevent late-onset sepsis in very low birth weight infants

3) “Prophylactic Phenobarbital after Resolution of Neonatal Seizures” (PROPHENO), a randomized study testing short-term efficacy and the long-term neurodevelopmental effects of maintenance Phenobarbital for four months following neonatal seizures

4) “Selective Head Cooling for the Treatment of Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy,” one of the two paramount studies that showed the efficacy of cooling for the treatment of babies with HIE 

In addition to clinical research, Dr. Yanowitz is the physician responsible for the Vermont-Oxford Network Database for Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, and she is working to create a systemwide neonatology database for the UPMC Newborn Medicine Program. Dr. Yanowitz represents the Division of Newborn Medicine on the University of Pittsburgh’s Institutional Review Board and is co-director of the Neonatal Neuro-Intensive Care Units at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC.