Kolokotrones Symposium

About the Kolokotrones Symposium

The Kolokotrones Symposium is a biannual event featuring panelists from CAUSALab as well as partner organizations, such as academic institutions, research centers, and government agencies. The symposia are hosted both in-person at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and virtually via Zoom. Past symposium topics have included causal inference in pregnancy, cardiovascular devices, suicide prevention, secure data environments, COVID-19 and more.

20th Kolokotrones Symposium

Acetaminophen During Pregnancy and Autism: What Does Causal Inference Take?

The 20th Kolokotrones Symposium will be held November 14, 2025. In-person attendance is limited to Harvard ID holders due to space restrictions. Online attendance is free and open to the public. Registration is closed.

The symposium will provide an introduction to the epidemiology of autism, present what is currently known about the association of acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism, describe possible explanations for this association, and explore the challenges and opportunities to design better studies to estimate the causal effect. The symposium will conclude with an expert panel that will consider the question: where do we go from here?

Speakers & panelists:

⭐ Marc Weisskopf (NIEHS Center for Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

Presentation: Autism Spectrum Disorders 

Marc G. Weisskopf, Ph.D., Sc.D., is the Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology, Director of the Harvard TH Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health, and Director of Epidemiological Studies for the Football Players Health Study at Harvard. Dr. Weisskopf received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, and his Sc.D. in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His epidemiological work focuses on the influence of environmental exposures on brain health across the life course. In particular, his research focuses on environmental risk factors for outcomes such as autism spectrum disorders, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cognitive function and dementia, and psychiatric conditions.

⭐ Krista Huybrechts (H4P, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

Presentation: Acetaminophen During Pregnancy and Autism – A Critical Appraisal of the Evidence 

Krista F. Huybrechts, M.S., Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She also holds an appointment as adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. Huybrechts teaches Database Analytics in Pharmacoepidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and guest lectures at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Huybrechts co-directs the Harvard Program on Perinatal and Pediatric Pharmacoepidemiology (H4P). Her research centers on the utilization, comparative safety and effectiveness of prescription medications in pregnant women and their offspring (www.harvardpreg.org). She has a special interest in research methodology and innovative research applications in relation to this field of study.

⭐ Brian Lee (Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health)

Presentation: Acetaminophen, Autism, and What Sibling Comparisons Tell Us 

Dr. Lee received his PhD and MHS degrees in Epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University, and graduated cum laude with an AB in Biological Anthropology from Harvard College. His research interests include the epidemiology of neurological development, maintenance and decline. Current topics include maternal medication use during pregnancy and child neurodevelopmental outcomes; and neurodegeneration in persons with neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Lee is PI of the NIH-funded LEGENNDS study – Linking Epidemiology and Genetics of Neurodevelopmental and Neurodegenerative Disorders. In addition to his etiological research, Dr. Lee is interested in epidemiological methods including causal inference methodology, data mining and machine learning algorithms.

⭐ Sonia Hernández-Díaz (CAUSALab, H4P, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

Presentation: The Study We Need to Inform Recommendations 

Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, MD, DrPH is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her area of interest is drug safety evaluation from non-randomized data, with a special emphasis on the design, conduct, and analysis of studies in pregnant women and their infants. Examples of her work include inquiries of the comparative safety of psychotropics for pregnant women and their offspring using real world evidence from case-control studies, pregnancy registries and large healthcare utilization databases. She is Past-President of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the Society for Perinatal and Pediatric Epidemiology Research; and has served as Chair for the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, as a member of the NICHD Pregnancy & Neonatology (PN) Study Section, and as member of the Teratogenic Information Services (TERIS) Advisory Board. Through her service to public health institutions she has contributed to the translation of research into policy and actionable recommendations for stakeholders. 

⭐ Alec Walker (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) – Moderator

Alec Walker’s research encompasses the safety, efficacy, and utilization of drugs, devices, vaccines, and medical procedures, as well as the health effects of chemicals used in the workplace and statistical methods in epidemiology. He founded the Pharmacoepidemiology Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is a former chair of the Department of Epidemiology. He has served as a statistical consultant for the New England Journal of Medicine and a contributing editor of The Lancet. Walker is a former president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. He received AB (Biochemistry), MD, MPH, and DrPH (Epidemiology) degrees from Harvard.

Speakers’ remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, and not for Harvard University.

Past Symposia

Browse former Kolokotrones Symposia and watch featured presentations

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Have an idea for a future Kolokotrones Symposium topic? If so, we would love to hear from you! Please email CAUSALab with your thoughts.