AUSTRALASIAN BRAIN CLUB 2025

Dr. Augusto Zani is a Neonatal and Paediatric Surgeon at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and a Scientist in the Development and Stem Cell Biology Program at SickKids Research Institute. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto (U of T). Dr. Zani is an associate member at the Institute of Medical Sciences at U of T, and serves as a committee member in the Translational Research Program of the Department of Surgery at U of T.

He received his MD and completed his paediatric surgical training at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He earned his PhD from University College London, UK, investigating stem cell therapy in necrotizing enterocolitis. Following this period, he advanced his clinical training in the UK by working in renowned teaching institutions like Great Ormond Street Hospital and King’s College Hospital, London, where he focused on neonatal and paediatric surgery. He then moved to Toronto for a fellowship in neonatal surgery and, in 2016, he joined the faculty in the Division of General and Thoracic Surgery at SickKids. Dr. Zani’s clinical interests are congenital anomalies.

Dr. Zani has funded a translational research program for the use of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as therapeutic and diagnostic tools for fetal, neonatal, and paediatric conditions.

Topun Austin is a Consultant Neonatologist in Cambridge and an Honorary Professor of Neurophotonics at University College London. He also serves as the Director of the Evelyn Perinatal Imaging Centre (EPIC) at the Rosie Hospital, Cambridge. His primary research interests include brain development and injury in newborns, utilizing novel monitoring and imaging technologies, and translating these into routine clinical care. He also focuses on assessing early infant behavior and functional brain connectivity.

Topun Austin collaborates closely with Professor David Rowitch, Head of Paediatrics at Cambridge University, in developing the Cambridge NeuroNICU, which aims to create a brain-oriented model of care for newborns in intensive care.

As the co-director of neoLAB, a collaborative group between EPIC and the Biomedical Optics Laboratory at UCL (led by Professor Jem Hebden and Associate Professor Rob Cooper), Topun Austin is involved in developing advanced optical imaging systems to study functional activity in the developing brain. His current projects include studying the role of sleep and functional connectivity in the developing brain, neural synchrony between mothers and babies associated with affectionate touch, functional imaging of motor activity in infants at risk of cerebral palsy, and evaluating optimal methods for detecting seizures in newborns.

Topun Austin has numerous productive collaborations with the Departments of Psychology (Professor Mark Johnson, Dr. Sarah-Lloyd Fox), Psychiatry (Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen), and Clinical Neurosciences (Professor Marek Czosnyka, Dr. Peter Smielewski) at the University of Cambridge, as well as with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Associate Professor Vicky Leong).

Dr. Julia Charlton received her medical degree at Monash University in Australia and completed her pediatric and neonatal fellowship training through the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. She completed a Graduate Diploma in Infant and Parent Mental Health then a PhD at the University of Melbourne before commencing as a Neonatologist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne where she led the Neonatal Neurodevelopmental Follow-up Program. Her research has focussed on brain injury and neurodevelopment in babies born with congenital anomalies and is evolving to explore the optimization of risk-benefit balance of analgesia and sedation in the NICU. She commenced as NICU Medical Director at BC Women’s Hospital and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics in late 2022.

Dr. Won Soon Park is an Emeritus Professor at Samsung medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University, and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Gangnam Cha Hospital, Cha University, School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea since 2022. He received his MD from Seoul National University, College of Medicine in 1982, and PhD from Seoul National University, Graduate School, Seoul, Korea in 1992. He has been the initiator and principal investigator of Korean Neonatal Network during 2013-2019. Dr. Park’s primary research interest is to develop clinical strategies to improve the survival and prognoses of micropremies, and from bench to bedside translation of stem cell therapy for neonatal intractable disorders including bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy and intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH). He has been the principal investigator of recently conducted phase I and II clinical trials for BPD and IVH, and he has 6,454 research citations and 44 h-index. .