Peter Dargaville trained in Neonatology at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, and at the University of California, San Francisco. His training included a two year full-time research project looking at pulmonary surfactant and its abnormalities in ventilated infants with lung disease, for which he was awarded an MD from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He now continues as a clinician-researcher at the Royal Hobart Hospital and University of Tasmania. The major focus of his research is the development and implementation of new therapies for neonatal lung disease. He has been Chief Investigator of the NHMRC-funded OPTIMIST-A trial, a multinational RCT of minimally invasive surfactant therapy in preterm infants with RDS. Other current research themes include the detection, prediction and curtailment of apnoea in preterm infants, and the exploration of mechanisms of lung injury in the immature neonatal lung. He is co-inventor of an algorithm for automated control of oxygen therapy in infants receiving supplemental oxygen, which is now patented and commercialised.
