Join us for Australia’s largest neonatology conference, to take a look into the future of neonatal care. Now in its 17th year, Cool Topic draws over 300 distinguished medical, nursing, and allied health professionals from Victoria, interstate and around the globe.
Presented by the Royal Women's Hospital
We’ll be covering a diverse range of topics: from transforming intergenerational trauma for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to exploring the latest in obstetrics technology.
We’ll bring you the latest on neonatal nutrition and oxygen therapy. How do we navigate the brave new world of individual patient and network meta-analyses and how should these change our practice? What are the priority research questions for our tiniest babies born before 25 weeks' gestation? And you’ll hear from families about their experiences of neonatal and palliative care and their views on what topics we should be researching.
Speakers
Take a look at some of the speakers we have lined up for Cool Topics 2024
Professor Chris Gale
Keynote Speaker
Chris is a Professor of Neonatal Medicine at Imperial College London and honorary consultant neonatologist at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust. His research focuses on improving newborn care through large, simple clinical trials, observational research and surveillance.
He leads two of the largest neonatal trials undertaken, the neoGASTRIC and WHEAT (WithHolding Enteral feeds Around Transfusion) trials, some of the only neonatal trials targeting prevention of necrotising enterocolitis. He works closely with parents and families to develop clinical trials, and to improve communication and consent in neonatal research.
Professor Peter Davis
Peter is a consultant neonatologist at the Royal Women's Hospital and a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne. He trained in Brisbane and at McMaster University, Canada. He has a keen interest in the dissemination of highest quality medical evidence to practitioners and consumers.
His research interests include alternative methods of respiratory support of premature babies, neonatal resuscitation and identification of important outcomes of neonatal intensive care. He has considerable experience in the design and conduct of international randomised controlled trials. His research work is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Neonatal Taskforce of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) which is responsible for formulating guidelines for neonatal resuscitation used worldwide.
Professor Jeanie Cheong
Jeanie Cheong is a neonatologist who is interested in life beyond discharge from the neonatal nursery. She is an internationally recognised clinician-researcher on the long-term health and development of high-risk newborns, especially those born preterm. She heads the Victorian Infant Collaborative Study, the longest running epidemiological study of extremely preterm cohorts, as well as the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Newborn Medicine.
Professor Peter Dargaville
Staff Specialist, Neonatal and Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, Royal Hobart Hospital, Hobart, Tasmania
Professorial Research Fellow in Neonatology, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania
Peter Dargaville trained in neonatology at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, and at the University of California, San Francisco. His training included a two year, full-time research project looking at pulmonary surfactant and its abnormalities in ventilated infants with lung disease, for which he was awarded an MD from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He now continues as a clinician-researcher at the Royal Hobart Hospital and University of Tasmania. The major focus of his research is the development and implementation of new therapies for neonatal lung disease.
He has been Chief Investigator of the NHMRC-funded OPTIMIST-A trial, a multinational RCT of minimally invasive surfactant therapy in preterm infants with RDS. He is co-inventor of an algorithm for automated control of oxygen therapy in infants receiving supplemental oxygen, the function of which continues to be evaluated in a range of settings, including in the OxyMate study conducted in two centres in South West Nigeria. Other current research themes include the detection, prediction and curtailment of apnoea in preterm infants, and the exploration of mechanisms of lung injury in the immature neonatal lung.
Professor Cath Chamberlain
Professor Catherine Chamberlain is a Palawa Trawlwoolway woman (Tasmania), Director of Onemda Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing and Head of the Indigenous Health Equity Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne. A registered midwife and public health researcher, her research aims to identify perinatal opportunities to improve health equity across the lifecourse. She is inaugural Editor-In-Chief of First Nations Health and Wellbeing: The Lowitja Journal and Principal Investigator for two large multi-disciplinary projects – Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future – which aims to co-design support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma; and Replanting the Birthing Trees, which aims to transform intergenerational cycles of trauma to cycles of nurturing and recovery.
Associate Professor Hamish Graham
Associate Professor Hamish Graham is a paediatrician, clinician-scientist, and leader in oxygen service delivery in low-resource settings globally. He works at the Centre for International Child Health, MCRI, University of Melbourne, and the Royal Children’s Hospital. He is a Visiting Consultant at University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria, and Co-Chair of the Lancet Global Health Commission on Medical Oxygen. Hamish is passionate about improving care for children in low- and middle-income countries, with a special interest in respiratory support for children and neonates, access to pulse oximetry and oxygen, and systems of care for children with acute and chronic conditions. Hamish works with collaborators in Nigeria, Uganda, Afghanistan, Lao PDR, and Cambodia, and has been supported by RCH Foundation, NHMRC, BMGF, Grand Challenges Canada, and others. Hamish has worked with MSF (Darfur, Sudan), and consulted for WHO, WHO-EMRO, UNICEF, ADB.
Maggie Lloyd
Maggie is Mum to a 27-week preterm baby who weighed 633g at birth, now 23 years old, so has firsthand experience as a prem parent and all that entails. Maggie has worked for the Life’s Little Treasures Foundation (LLTF), Australia’s foremost charity in supporting families of premature and sick babies for the past 9 years in a variety of roles until her new position as National Services Manager in late 2023.
With a keen interest in research, Maggie is an active member of the Consumer Advisory Group for the Centre of Research Excellence in Newborn Medicine since its establishment in 2019. She has helped support over 15 projects where she contributes to research priorities for premature and sick babies and their families. Maggie is currently acting as a Chief Investigator for Melbourne Universities Active-Prem study and is also a member of the VIC/TAS NICU Database Group and contributes as a consumer as required.
Jasmine Lloyd
Jasmine Lloyd has the lived experience of being born premature at 27 weeks, weighing 633g, way back in 2001. She is now 23 years old and enjoying the valuable opportunities given to help with research outcomes for prem babies and their families. Jasmine volunteers for the MCRI Centre of Research Excellence’s Consumer Advisory Group. She also volunteers with the Life’s Little Treasures Foundation, Australia’s foremost charity that supports the families of babies born premature or sick.
Jasmine is passionate about improving the outcomes of babies born prematurely through research by taking part in co-designing various projects being developed through the CRE and Melbourne Uni. Such as the Active Prem and Parkrun for Prems studies. Along with her mum Maggie, who joins her in the advisory group and works for the Life’s Little Treasures Foundation.
Associate Professor Jane Alsweiler
Department of Paediatrics: Child and Youth Health, University of Auckland
Jane Alsweiler is the Deputy Head of the School of Medicine at the University of Auckland and works clinically as a neonatal paediatrician in the neonatal intensive care unit at Auckland City Hospital. She is the chair of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) policy committee and the neonatal representative on the PSANZ Board. Her current research interests focus on neonatal glucose homeostasis, including long-term consequences of hypo- and hyperglycaemia, and caffeine prophylaxis in infants born late preterm.
Dr Shiraz Badurdeen
Shiraz is a consultant neonatologist at the Mercy Hospital for Women and the inaugural Melbourne Children’s Global Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow. As an early-career researcher, he aims to make oxygen therapy safer and more effective for critically unwell newborns across diverse settings. His research focuses on personalising oxygen therapy to fit specific pathophysiological contexts. Supported by a diverse team of collaborators, Shiraz is undertaking translational studies and developing novel applications of technology to address key knowledge gaps in newborn oxygenation.
Shiraz completed his medical training at Cambridge and his neonatology training in Melbourne, Oxford, and London. In 2022, he earned a Translational Research PhD from Monash University. He has a particular interest in research methods and serves as an associate editor for Archives of Disease in Childhood Fetal & Neonatal Edition.
Dr Stacey Peart
Dr Stacey Peart is a consultant neonatologist at Monash Newborn and the Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval Service (PIPER), having completed her training in Melbourne. She is also a research fellow in the Royal Women’s Hospital Newborn Research Department, where she is completing a PhD with the University of Melbourne addressing under-represented cohorts in neonatal clinical trials. Stacey has a keen interest in improving the care of the most preterm infants and their families. When she’s not juggling clinical work and research, she’s a mum to three young children.
Dr Sid Vermuri
Sid is a general paediatrician and palliative care physician that works with patients and their families across the age spectrum. For most of his clinical time, he works in the Victorian Paediatric Palliative Care Program based at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Monash Children’s Hospital, with the remainder of time in the Parkville Integrated Palliative Care Service at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Sid was awarded his PhD in 2024 where he examined how doctors help parents think about treatment decisions that will need to be made near the end of their child’s life. He identified and coined the communication behaviour of “shepherding” which was not previously recognised. Furthering our understanding of shepherding and enhancing relationship-centred care for complex decision-making is the focus of his Clinician-Scientist Bridging Award with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
Professor Stuart Hooper
Professor Stuart Hooper is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and has recently stepped down as Director of the Ritchie Centre, Hudson Institute for Medical Research and Monash University. He is a fetal and neonatal physiologist who has published >400 papers on fetal and neonatal lung development and how the lungs transform into a functional gas-exchange organ at birth. His current research interests include:
- the cardiorespiratory transition at birth, focusing on lung aeration and the timing of umbilical cord clamping
- improving non-invasive respiratory support for extremely preterm infants.
He has pioneered the use of phase contrast X-ray imaging of the lungs to identify the primary mechanisms of airway liquid clearance after birth and has demonstrated the cardiovascular benefits of clamping the cord after lung aeration.
Dr Anna Lene Seidler (Lene)
Anna Lene Seidler (Lene) is a Senior Research Fellow at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, where she leads the NextGen Evidence Synthesis team.
Dr Seidler develops and improves methods for cooperation and coordination of research. Her research brings together evidence from multiple large international datasets to answer high priority research questions. She leads a number of international research collaborations focusing on child health, including the iCOMP collaboration on cord management at preterm birth. She also has a strong research interest in improving health equity, and research transparency, quality and integrity.
Dr Seidler is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Research Associate for the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry and Co-Convenor of the Cochrane Prospective Meta-Analysis Methods Group.
Dr Trisha Prentice
Dr Trisha Prentice is a neonatologist and bioethicist at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne, Australia. She is passionate about the intersections of innovation, palliative care and ethics. Trisha is a current Clinician Scientist Fellow with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute where her research interests include end-of-life decision-making and understanding the moral distress of clinicians and families as they navigate complex decisions. As the research lead for the RCH Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Trisha has also been a strong advocate for establishing the consumer voice across all care and research domains. Additionally, Trisha provides leadership on a number of local and national committees addressing end-of-life care and clinical ethics including the PSANZ perinatal ethics subcommittee.
Professor Karen Walker
Professor Karen Walker is a neonatal clinical nurse consultant at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and a Clinical Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. A past president of the Australian College of Neonatal Nurses, she is the current President of the Council of International Neonatal Nurses and is passionate about promoting quality care for the small and sick newborn through advocating for neonatal nurses, strengthening the global health workforce and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. She was integral in writing a successful grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a COINN Community of Neonatal Nursing Practice in Africa of which she is a director. Professor Walker works closely with the WHO and sits on many expert advisory committees. She is Vice-Chair of the Knowledge and Accountability working group for the Partnership for Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health where she co-leads the maternal, newborn and child health stream, which recently published Born Too: Soon Decade of Action on Preterm Birth.
Associate Professor Fiona Brownfoot
A/Prof Fiona Brownfoot is a clinician-scientist, an obstetrician at the Mercy Hospital for Women and Epworth Freemasons and a laboratory trained scientist at the University of Melbourne. She leads the Obstetric Diagnostics and Therapeutics Group, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, scientists and engineers focused on improving outcomes for mothers and babies. She is particularly interested in developing novel devices to improve fetal monitoring and identifying treatments for placental disease. She is translating concepts from laboratory experiment to commercial, medical-grade device. She is achieving this through a start-up, Kali Healthcare, which she co-founded. She has authored over 75 publications and has been the CI on grants over $7.5 million. She has received national and international awards for her work and given over 15 invited presentations.
Samantha O’Dwyer
Samantha O’Dwyer is a mother of 5 children, a primary school teacher, an educational leader and presenter, a budding writer, and a bereaved mother. In 2019, Sam and her husband welcomed their third and fourth children into their family, twin girls born at 28 weeks gestation. Sam will share her daughter Nora’s journey in the NICU and their experiences navigating the necessary but painful end of life decisions during the short 6.5 months of Nora’s life. Samantha and her husband Richard reside in Melbourne with their four living children: two boys aged 8 and 2, and two girls, aged 6 and 5. Life is both broken and blessed all at once, with four in their arms and their angel Nora beautifully weaved into every fibre of their lives.
