Allison Komorowski, MD

About

Three degrees, one campus. Allison Komorowski took a BA in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis in 2013, her MD at the same university’s medical school in 2017, and OB/GYN residency training at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in 2021. Then she left St. Louis: a reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship at Northwestern, finished in 2024, and a faculty appointment at the center where she trained.

Her research sits off the usual bench-to-bedside path. She has written on why some patients reach assisted reproduction and others never get there — work recognized with a paper award from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine — and she carries an Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society credential from medical school. Patients who expect a fertility doctor to talk only about follicle counts tend to get more than that in her consultations; the PNP degree is an ethics-and-behavior major, and her stated focus is caring for “all who are hoping to build or expand their family.”

She is the newest of the twelve physicians on the Northwestern Medicine Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine staff, working out of the Chicago practice on E. Erie Street, inside a group whose lab runs time-lapse embryo culture and whose clinic reports under the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Clinical Expertise

• IVF cycle management — stimulation protocols set from antral follicle count, AMH, FSH and day-3 estradiol, with retrieval scheduled 36-38 hours after the trigger shot
• ICSI — injected rather than coincubated fertilization when sperm parameters call for it
• PGT-A — embryo biopsy and genetic screening before transfer, done with laser-assisted manipulation in the center’s own andrology and IVF lab
• Female infertility evaluation — the full pre-treatment panel: hormone and ovarian reserve testing, hysterosalpingogram or saline sonohysterogram, semen analysis for the partner, genetic carrier screening
• Access and cost counseling — how a plan’s coverage, exclusions and precertification timeline change what a first cycle should look like

Why Choose Dr. Allison Komorowski

Current training, same building as the lab. She finished her REI fellowship at Northwestern in 2024, which means the stimulation and transfer habits she learned are the ones this center uses — day-5 culture in Embryoscope time-lapse incubators, an air-purification system that strips volatile compounds out of the embryo room, biopsy by laser.

She studies who gets left out. A paper award from ASRM for health-disparities work is an unusual line on a fertility attending’s CV. It also predicts the conversation: a patient worried about what insurance will pay for has found a physician who has published on exactly that barrier.

She explains the decision instead of skipping it. Philosophy and neuroscience as an undergraduate, and a clinical style built around the question patients actually ask — why this protocol for me and not the one on the internet.

Junior faculty access, academic-center backup. Newer attendings tend to spend more minutes per visit, and behind her sits a division whose faculty and fellows run NIH- and Gates Foundation-funded translational research.

Professional Affiliations

American Society for Reproductive Medicine; Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. Board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and fellowship-trained in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, she practices at a SART member clinic, so cycle outcomes are recorded against the national reporting standard rather than a clinic’s own spreadsheet. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the group’s affiliated hospital, is nationally ranked in Obstetrics & Gynecology in the U.S. News hierarchy.

Suitable For

First-cycle patients who want the workup done once and explained. Komorowski’s evaluation follows the center’s standard panel — reserve testing, cavity imaging, semen analysis, carrier screening — before anyone prescribes a stim protocol.

Women under 38 with unexplained infertility, where the choice between three rounds of IUI and going straight to IVF is genuinely close, and where a physician with an ethics background tends to lay out both sides.

Patients rationing care by dollars. Fees at this center are quoted case by case by financial counselors rather than posted online, and coverage exclusions decide more first cycles than biology does. She works inside that system rather than around it.

Younger patients meeting a specialist for the first time, who get a faculty physician trained this year rather than a curriculum from a decade ago.