FACULTY

Dr Neil Aiton

Neil is a consultant neonatologist with an interest in perinatal substance use. Arising from the clinical work has been a clinical and research interest in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). He has undertaken NIH (USA)-funded research into early identification using 3D facial analysis in collaboration with the University of Oxford, and presented at national and international conferences. Together with Dr Mukherjee he edited an international multi-author textbook on FASD which was published last year.

Ms Annie Aloysius

Annie is a Speech and Language Therapist and Lactation Consultant and has worked for over 25 years in the field of paediatric feeding and swallowing difficulties, specialising in Neonatology. She currently works on the neonatal units at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHNT), London alongside the multidisciplinary team supporting staff, families and their babies with feeding and development. She has led on achievement of their neonatal Unicef Baby Friendly accreditation and published n successful outcomes of their integrated family delivered care programme. She is chair of the RCSLT neonatal CEN She has worked with a number of charities and organisations on projects and initiatives to support feeding and neonatal care at home and abroad; BAPM, Unicef BFI, Bliss, Birthlink UK, Best Beginnings Small wonders.

Sarah Bates

Sarah Bates graduated from University of Wales College of Medicine in 2002 and was appointed in 2015 as a Consultant Paediatrician & Neonatologist in Swindon. From 2017 to 2021 she was the national representative for local neonatal and special care baby units to British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM) Executive Committee. In 2021, she was elected as the National Quality Lead for BAPM She is a co-author of the 2019 BAPM Extremely Preterm Framework, and she is passionate about perinatal team culture, working together to reduce death and brain injury in preterm infants through implementation of simple, low cost evidence-based interventions, with particular focus on Optimal Cord Management and Early Maternal Breast Milk. She is the PERIPrem Operational Clinical Lead across the South West of England and has been involved in national perinatal preterm optimisation toolkits for BAPM, National Neonatal Audit Programme (NNAP) and MatNeoSIP.

Prof. Jeanie Cheong

Jeanie Cheong is a neonatologist who is interested in outcomes beyond the neonatal nursery. She is the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Newborn Medicine, and heads the Victorian Infant Collaborative Study, the longest running epidemiological program of research on outcomes following extremely preterm birth.

Dr Jonathan Coutts

Trained in Glasgow, Vancouver and Hong Kong. Currently working in a large neonatal surgical/cardiac unit with an interest in respiratory and airway problems. Respiratory outpatients and specialist clinics providing long term follow-up of congenital surgical abnormalities (CDH, CPAM, TOF etc)

Dr Julian Eason

Dr Julian Eason is a Consultant Neonatologist and Senior Lecturer currently practicing part-time in the UK as an Intensivist and Transport Consultant for the Transport Services in the Southwest of England. He has recently retired as a Senior Lecturer in Aviation and Transport Medicine for the University of Otago in New Zealand and is currently one of the course organisers for Neonatal Training in Hanoi for the charity ‘Newborns Vietnam’.

Prof. Alain Fraisse

Prof. Samir Gupta

Samir Gupta is Professor of Neonatology at University of Durham, United Kingdom. He is Medical director for Research and Senior consultant in Neonatology & Lead for Neonatal Hemodynamics and Transitional physiology program at Sidra Medicine, Qatar. He is Honorary Fellow at NPEU, University of Oxford, UK. READ MORE

Prof. Rod Hunt

Professor Rod Hunt is a Neonatal Neurologist in Melbourne, Australia. He has worked on the Victorian Infant Brain Studies and his research focusses on optimising outcomes of the high-risk infant. This has included the use of bedside electrophysiology, cerebral MRI and long term neurodevelopmental follow-up.

Dr Minesh Kashu

Prof. Karen Luyt

Karen Luyt read medicine in South Africa and specialised in Paediatrics (Neonatal Medicine) in the UK. She has a clinical academic post, based in Neonatal Intensive Care at St Michael’s Hospital and the University of Bristol. READ MORE

Ms Alex Mancini

Alex Mancini-Smith is a senior neonatal nurse with over 30 years experience and is the National Lead Nurse, leading the National Neonatal Palliative Care Project in the UK, the first innovative post of it’s kind. The initial pilot project commenced in the London Neonatal Operational Delivery Network in 2015 , with further funding in 2021 to replicate across other Neonatal ODN regions over a three year period. READ MORE

Dr Andreas Ohlin

Andreas Ohlin is a Swedish neonatologist based in Örebro, Sweden. He is the former Head of the Pediatric Department at Örebro University Hospital and is currently employed at the medical program at Örebro University and acting as a senior neonatal consultant. His main research interests are diagnosis and prevention of neonatal sepsis, treatment of neonatal icterus and neonatal pain.

Dr Natalie Shenker

Dr. Natalie Shenker is an Oxford trained doctor with a PhD in cancer and environmental epigenetics from Imperial College London. During her PhD, she became fascinated with the complexity of human milk and the potential for milk banking to play a wider role in public health. Alongside Gillian Weaver, she set up The Hearts Milk Bank as part of the Human Milk Foundation charity in 2017, aiming to build a new model of milk banking that can facilitate research and underpin nationally equitable milk banking services. In 2019, Natalie won a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, and her group works on a programme of implementation science to investigate the impacts of milk bank services in the support of maternal breastfeeding and mental wellbeing, environmental impacts and mitigations, and understanding how donor milk can be personalised as a therapy.

Dr Yogen Singh

Dr. Yogen Singh is a Full Professor of Pediatrics at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, California and he has been a Consultant Neonatologist and Paediatrician with Expertise in Paediatric Cardiology at Cambridge University Hospitals since 2013. READ MORE

Dr Nimish Subhedar

Dr. Subhedar is a Consultant Neonatologist working at Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Lead for the Cheshire & Merseyside Neonatal Network. Dr. Subhedar’s clinical and research interests include neonatal cardiology and echocardiography in general and, specifically, patent ductus arteriosus, pulmonary hypertension and inhaled nitric oxide therapy. He is a co-applicant on the Baby OSCAR Trial of early selective treatment of PDA in preterm infants.

Mrs Stephanie Tagani

Stephanie Tagani is the Clinical Lead Neonatal Dietitian at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, covering both Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea (level 3) and St. Mary’s (level 2) Neonatal units. She works in conjunction with the medical team, the babies’ families and the wider multi-disciplinary team, to monitor and advise on the optimal nutrition for growth and development of the babies on the Imperial neonatal units. Stephanie is actively involved in teaching for nurses, doctors, dietitians, other allied health professionals and students – within her Trust, nationally and internationally. She has led on a number of audits, written nutritional guidelines for the Trust and network, has had abstracts published at international conferences and has co-developed a neonatal nutrition module with Health Education England.