Research stars shine bright at 2024 Symposium

The Women and Infants Research Foundation were thrilled to host more than 160 health professionals, researchers, academics, consumers and supporters at our premier scientific event - the 2024 Stars Symposium: Timing is Everything.

Chaired by WIRF’s Chief Scientist, Professor Matt Kemp, this year’s sold out Symposium showcased new and innovative home-grown research programs that are positively impacting key areas of health for babies, women and their pregnancies.

It was our distinct pleasure to host this year’s Visiting Professor, Prof Mark Evans from the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York. Prof Evans captivated the audience with his presentation, ‘Re-engineering Electronic Fetal Monitoring’.

As part of his keynote presentation, Professor Evans examined how a new approach to electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) is poised to make dramatic advances in reducing distress during labour and delivery.

Earlier in the week, Prof Evans appeared live in-studio with ABC Perth Radio to discuss EFM, its role in preventing intrapartum stillbirths, and how it had dramatically increased caesarean deliveries. You can listen to the ABC interview here.

Preceding Prof Evans were the featured Senior Researchers: Dr Haruo Usuda, Dr Zoe Bradfield, Dr Jonathan Davis and Dr Mathias Epee-Bekima. These leaders of their fields provided updates on the development of new probiotic therapies for preterm infants, better antenatal steroid treatments for fetuses at risk of preterm delivery, a new life-support platform for babies with serious respiratory failure, and a breakthrough WA trial to stem induced labours.

The Symposium began with a special consumer and community panel facilitated by Mrs Joanne Beedie from Helping Little Hands. The panel helped set the translational impacts of the work that the Foundation supports. This was followed by presentations from some of WA’s top emerging medical researchers – Dr Sean Carter, Dr Dimple Goel, Dr Sara Morris, and Dr Chandra Rath.

You can view the individual speaker presentations at our YouTube channel.

A major highlight of this year’s Stars Symposium was the announcement of the successful recipients of WIRF’s 2024 Research Acceleration Awards. See the list of winners here.

Made possible with the generous support of the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation and the Bass Family Foundation, the Awards aim to facilitate innovative home grown projects from research to real-world impact and secure a pipeline of research talent for long-term community benefit.

WIRF would like to thank all the speakers and delegates of this year’s Stars Symposium for their support especially our valued Sponsors: the Centre for Entrepreneurial Research and Innovation and the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation (Gold Sponsors), Besins Healthcare (Silver Sponsor), and the Eastcourt Foundation (Bronze Sponsor).

Contact details

Women and Infants Research Foundation
Carson House, King Edward Memorial Hospital
374 Bagot Road, Subiaco, WA 6008

Telephone: 08 6458 1437
Fax: 08 6458 1642
Email: info@wirf.com.au

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Research stars shine bright at 2024 Symposium

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