Research stars shine bright at Stars Symposium

A chance to hear from some of Western Australia’s leading researchers and clinicians has attracted more than 130 health professionals, researchers and academics from across the state to the 2023 Stars Scientific Symposium.

As WIRF’s premier scientific event, this year’s Stars Symposium showcased new and innovative home-grown research programs that are positively impacting key areas of health for babies, women and their pregnancies.

Visiting Professor, Prof Caroline Homer AO from the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, headlined with her presentation, ‘Turning the tide of caesarean sections: Are we too late? Does it matter?’.

As part of her keynote, Professor Homer challenged our thinking about caesarean sections – how best to offer it, use it, study it and defend or deny it.

The day before the Symposium, Prof Homer appeared live in-studio with ABC Perth Radio to speak about the exponential rise in rates of caesarean sections in Western Australia and across the country, and its associated positive and negative benefits and impacts. You can listen to the ABC interview here.

Preceding Prof Homer were the featured Senior Researchers: Clinical Assoc Prof Mary Sharp (King Edward Memorial Hospital), Dr Sarah Li (National University of Singapore) and Dr Joseph Carpini (University of Western Australia).

The Symposium began with a powerful consumer panel that reflected on their own lived experiences of preterm birth, and presentations by some of WA’s top emerging medical researchers – Jaime Thomas, Kaila Stevens, Erin Fee and Dr Haruo Usuda.

A major highlight of this year’s Stars Symposium was the announcement of the successful recipients of WIRF’s inaugural Research Acceleration Awards who were: Dr Jayne Kotz, Prof Peter Gething, Prof Luke Haseler, Laurene Aydon, Dr Mark Fear, and Kristina Magoutas. See the full list of award recipients and their projects here.

WIRF would like to thank all the speakers and delegates of this year’s Stars Symposium for their support especially our valued Sponsors: CERI, Pharmacy 777, Euroz Hartleys Foundation and the Eastcourt Foundation. You can view the 2023 Stars Symposium photo gallery here.

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 Stars Symposium

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