Perinatology trailblazer named A/Chief Scientist

The Board of the Women and Infants Research Foundation is proud to announce the appointment of Professor Matt Kemp as the Foundation’s Acting Chief Scientist.

In 2009, Professor Kemp was recruited to Perth to lead WIRF’s sheep-based perinatal research program.

He is an Adjunct Professor, in the UWA Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and holds a number of international appointments, including Honorary Associate Professor at Tohoku University Hospital, Japan, and Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is a Harvard alumnus, and graduate of Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development. He holds PhDs in Medicine and Education and completed postdoctoral training at Oxford University.

Professor 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 and has attracted $10.15 million in funding from a range of national and international agencies. These include: the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the National Institutes of Health, 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.

He 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.

Working with collaborators in Japan, Professor 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 and an invited exhibition at Ars Electronica Linz, Europe’s largest Art-Science festival.

He continues to work closely with academic and industry partners including GSK, Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A. and Nipro Corporation. Working with collaborators in the United States, Professor 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.

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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Perinatology trailblazer named A/Chief Scientist

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