Professor Matt Kemp

Professor Matt Kemp completed his undergraduate studies in New Zealand at Otago University. He holds PhDs in Medicine (2006; UNSW) and Education (2015; UWA), and completed postdoctoral training at Oxford University with the support of an MRC Career Development Fellowship.  In 2009 he was recruited to Perth to lead the Foundation’s sheep-based perinatal research program.

Matt is an Adjunct Professor, in the UWA Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and holds a number of international appointments, including Honorary Associate Professor (Centre for Perinatal and Neonatal Medicine) at Tohoku University Hospital and Associate Professor (Obstetrics and Gynaecology) at the National University of Singapore. He is a Harvard alumnus, and graduate of Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development. 

Professor Matt Kemp’s research interests in perinatology are focused on improving outcomes for preterm infants, and include anti-inflammatory and antibiotic therapies, antenatal steroid treatment optimisation, minimally invasive fetal diagnostics, and the development of an artificial uterine life support platform for extremely preterm infants. His work has received significant international attention, being awarded prizes by the Society for Reproductive Investigation (USA), the Japan Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.

Professor Matt Kemp’s work has attracted $10.15 million in funding from a range of national and international agencies including the NHMRC, the NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Royal Society, the Ramaciotti Foundations and the Financial Markets Foundation for Children. His 2018 NHMRC Artificial Placenta funding application was the highest scoring Project Grant awarded in Western Australia in over a decade and ranked among the top three scoring Project Grants in the country that year.  

Professor Matt Kemp has published 130 peer-reviewed papers and scientific reports. His work has significantly advanced our understanding of how the fetus responds to infectious and inflammatory insults, how susceptibility to infection changes with gestation, and how common prematurity-associated infections can be targeted with antibiotic agents.

Matt works closely with academic and industry partners including GSK, Chiesi S.p.A and Nipro Corporation. Working with collaborators in the United States, Professor Matt Kemp’s antenatal steroid studies have shown that current dosing strategies are excessive and demonstrated how modulated dosing can be used to deliver optimal preterm lung maturation. These data are now being used by the WHO to undertake the first low-dose antenatal steroid studies in low- and middle-income countries.

Working with collaborators in Japan, Professor Matt Kemp’s studies with the artificial uterine life support platform for extremely preterm infants have generated national and international interest and are presently in an advanced phase of pre-clinical development. The impact of his work in this field is reflected in regular media engagements (SBS, ABC, BBC, the Guardian) and an invited exhibition at Ars Electronica Linz, Europe’s largest Art-Science festival.

Professor Matt Kemp is committed to building research capacity in perinatal medicine and supervises a number of doctoral candidates and clinical fellows. He also maintains an active interest in higher education. Professor Kemp undertook some of the first studies into learning systems in the biomedical doctorate, a contribution that saw him awarded the Dr Teck Jin Lian and WAIER prizes in Education and him being shortlisted for Education Thesis of the Year (2015).

Professor Kemp was named as WIRF's Chief Scientist in April 2021.

Matt has published 65 peer-reviewed papers in the past five years alone. His work has significantly advanced our understanding of how the fetus responds to infectious and inflammatory insults, how susceptibility to infection changes with gestation, and how common prematurity-associated infections can be targeted with antibiotic agents.

Working with collaborators in the United States, his antenatal steroids studies have shown that current dosing strategies are likely excessive and demonstrated how modulated dosing can be used to deliver optimal preterm lung maturation.

Working in collaborators in Japan, Matt’s studies with the artificial uterine life support platform for extremely preterm infants have generated national and international interest and are presently in an advanced phase of pre-clinical development.

Matt also maintains an active interest in higher education, and has made a significant contribution to the empirical-based development of learning systems in doctoral education.

• Antenatal steroid therapy optimisation
• Antibiotic therapies in pregnancy
• Antiinflammatory therapies in pregnancy
• Ultrasound assessment of fetal cardiac function
• WA Preterm Birth Prevention Initiative

• 2017 Program for Leadership Development (PLD). Harvard Business School. Boston, MA.
• 2015 Company Directors Course (GAICD). Australian Institute of Company Directors, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
• 2014 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia, Western Australia, Australia.
• 2010 Postgraduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PgDipLATHE) Department of Education, The University of Oxford, UK.
• 2006 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Department of Medicine, The University of New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia.
• 2001 Postgraduate Diploma of Medical Laboratory Science (PgDipMLSc). Awarded with Distinction. Division of Health Sciences, The University of Otago, Otago, New Zealand.
• 2001 Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science (BMLSc). Division of Health Sciences, The University of Otago, Otago, New Zealand.

• 2015 Honorary Associate Professor, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan
• 2015 Government of Western Australia, Department of Health Merit Award for NHMRC Project
• 2015 Government of Western Australia, Department of Health Merit Award for NHMRC Fellowship
• 2015 Japan Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology International Session Oral Presentation Award. 67th Annual Meeting. April 9-12, Yokohama, Japan.
• 2015 University of Western Australia, Dr Teck Jin Lian Memorial Prize in Education.
• 2015 University of Western Australia, Cameron Prize in Education.
• 2014 Visiting Fellowship, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, Queen’s Institute for Medical Research, The University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, UK.
• 2013 International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, Prize for Best Poster. November 16-20, Singapore.
• 2013 Society for Gynaecological Investigation, President’s (Pfizer) In-Training Award. March 18-21, Orlando, FL.
• 2012 Western Australian Government Department of Health New Independent Investigator (NIRIS) Award.
• 2012 University of Western Australia WAIER (Western Australian Institute for Education Research) Prize.
• 2012 Japan Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology International Session Oral Presentation Award. 64th Annual Meeting. April 13-15, Kobe, Japan.
• 2012 Society for Gynaecological Investigation (SGI) New Investigator Award. 59th Annual Meeting. March 21-24, San Diego, CA.
   

1. Kemp MW. Preterm birth, intrauterine infection, and fetal inflammation. Frontiers in immunology 2014;5.
2. Kemp MW, Ahmed S, Beeton ML, et al. Foetal Ureaplasma parvum bacteraemia as a function of gestation‐dependent complement insufficiency: Evidence from a sheep model of pregnancy. American Journal of Reproductive Immunology 2017;77.
3. Kemp MW, Miura Y, Payne MS, et al. Repeated maternal intramuscular or intraamniotic erythromycin incompletely resolves intrauterine Ureaplasma parvum infection in a sheep model of pregnancy. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology 2014;211:134. e1-34. e9.
4. Kemp MW, Saito M, Usuda H, et al. Maternofetal pharmacokinetics and fetal lung responses in chronically catheterized sheep receiving constant, low-dose infusions of betamethasone phosphate. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology 2016;215:775. e1-75. e12.
5. Usuda H, Watanabe S, Miura Y, et al. Successful maintenance of key physiological parameter in preterm lambs treated with ex vivo uterine environment therapy for a period of 1 week. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 2017.