Invited Speakers

Amanda Beech is a Women’s Health Endocrinologist and Obstetric Physician at the Royal Hospital for Women and holds a conjoint senior lecturer position at the University of New South Wales. She has a breadth of clinical experience women’s health across all ages, from preconception counselling and pregnancy to menopause and osteoporosis. She currently co-chairs the Menopause Taskforce in NSW and is the Director of the Bone Density Service at the Royal Hospital for Women. Her research interests include optimising medication safety to reduce falls risk in postmenopausal women with Osteoporosis and she coordinates the Secondary Fracture Prevention Service at the Royal Hospital for Women.

Victoria Eley is the Professor and Head of the University of Queensland Mayne Academy of Critical Care. She is the Research Lead Anaesthetist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and member of the ANZCA Research Committee. Professor Eley provides clinical services in adult and obstetric anaesthesia and is currently undertaking a Metro North Clinician Research Fellowship.

Stefan C. Kane MBBS BA BMedSc PhD FRANZCOG CMFM DDU(O&G) is a maternal fetal medicine subspecialist obstetrician who serves as Medical Director of Maternity Services and Acting Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne. He holds an honorary appointment as Clinical Associate Professor in the University of Melbourne Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in which he completed his PhD in 2022 investigating the maternal cerebral effects of preeclampsia. Stefan also has the privilege of serving as the current President of the Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand. 

Dr Caroline Wilson is an Obstetric Physician and Clinical Haematologist at The Mater Hospital in Brisbane. Accordingly, she has a keen interest in Obstetric Haematology during all phases of pregnancy including preconception, antenatal and post-natal care. She has a further sub-specialty interest in haemoglobinopathies both in the obstetric and non-obstetric setting. As the chair of the multi-disciplinary team managing complex pregnancies, she is passionate about coordinating high-risk obstetric care to facilitate optimal outcomes.    

Dr Richard Pole is married with a school age daughter, and an increasingly old and grumpy Mastiff cross previously rescued from the Whangarei SPCA. Richard himself was previously rescued from Timaru, South Canterbury.

Richard attended Otago Medical School and then subsequently took up a Fulbright Scholarship attending Harvard Business School in Boston, USA. Graduating MBA in 2008, Richard moved to New York City to work in healthcare management at a large non-profit healthcare provider.

After this stint in America, Richard worked for a year as a doctor in a remote clinic in southwestern Ethiopia. He then returned to New Zealand with his wife Rahat, settling in Auckland to undertake specialist training in Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Richard now focuses exclusively on obstetrics, and has undertaken subspecialty training in Maternal Fetal Medicine, including spending 2019 working at the Maternal Fetal Medicine Unit at Mater Mothers in Brisbane, Australia.

Richard combines private obstetric practice with his role as a Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist at Auckland City Hospital, National Women's Health.

Dr Caroline Airey is a neurologist with a subspecialty interest in headache disorders. She is a Visiting Medical Officer at the Mater Hospital, South Brisbane and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland.

She did a fellowship in movement disorders, prior to pursuing an interest in headache and obstetric related neurology. She has research interests in motor neuron disease, chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, movement disorders and headache. She is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Headache Society (ANZHS). She is an invited speaker for lectures in headache management to registrars, GPs and neurologists.

Dr Airey set up the first public headache clinic in Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and currently runs a multidisciplinary headache clinic in private practice.

Professor Catherine Chamberlain is a descendant of the Trawlwoolway clan (Palawa, Tasmania), Director of Onemda Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne. A Registered Midwife and Public Health researcher, her research aims to identify perinatal opportunities to improve health equity across the lifecourse, for which she has received the Lowitja Research leadership award (2019) and CATSINAM fellowship (2022). She is inaugural Editor-In-Chief of First Nations Health and Wellbeing Lowitja Journal and Principal Investigator for two large multi-disciplinary projects – Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future – which aims to co-design support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma; and Replanting the Birthing Trees, which aims to transform intergenerational cycles of trauma to cycles of nurturing and recovery.

Lucy is a maternal fetal medicine sub-specialist as well as actively practising Obstetrics and Gynaecology.  She qualified and trained in O & G in the North East of England, which provided an excellent training in the field of medical complications in Obstetrics.  She moved to Sydney permanently in 2000 and works in the public sector at the Royal Hospital for Women and privately at Ultrasound Care.  She is passionate about providing every (not just Obstetricians) maternity care provider clear accessible advice and clinical guidelines in order to save women's lives.

Dr Renee Eslick is a staff specialist haematologist and obstetric physician at The Canberra Hospital. She has active research interests in obstetric haematology and was the lead author of the Australian and New Zealand guidelines on management of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy. She is passionate about medical education and is the Network Director of Physician Education for Canberra Health Services. She is Vice Chair of the Early Career Committee for the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, the leading global specialist society in the field of thrombosis and haemostasis. She is also a member of the Haematology in Obstetrics and Women’s Health (HOW Collaborative) steering committee.  

Dr Katherine Sevar specialises in Psychiatry, with a sub-specialty in Perinatal Psychiatry. Her qualifications include a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Edinburgh, 2005, and a Masters of Psychological Medicine, 2012. She is a Fellow of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (FRANZCP) and has experience across perinatal psychiatry, consultation and liaison psychiatry, community psychiatry, criminal and civil forensic psychiatry. She is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia and Notre Dame and previously worked with the State-wide Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Unit, WA. She is undertaking a PhD investigating perinatal depression through Monash University, Melbourne. 

Dr Linda (Lu-Yin) Yen MBChB (University of Otago, NZ) FRACP, and has had obstetric medicine training at National Women’s Health Auckland City Hospital. She is currently working as a rheumatologist and a general physician at Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau. She also does obstetric medicine clinics to care for high-risk maternity patients.   

Dr Nicolae completed an undergraduate medical degree in Bucharest, Romania in 1990. He completed his RACP Cardiology training in 2006, working at a number of hospitals in South Africa and Brisbane. In 2007 he completed a one-year Fellowship in Adult Congenital Heart Disease in Brisbane at The Prince Charles Hospital with Dr Dorothy Radford, and in 2008 he completed his second fellowship year in ACHD in Vancouver, at the University of British Columbia, St. Paul’s Hospital with Prof. Marla Kiess. Dr Nicolae has been a staff specialist at The Prince Charles Hospital
until December 2018. He commenced Private Practice at various Private Hospitals in Brisbane in 2009. In 2016, he joined the Cardiology department at the Mater Adults Hospital in Brisbane and he established the Mater Adult Congenital Heart Service (MACH Service). In 2015, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Internal Medicine with a Subspecialty Certificate in Cardiology in 2017.

Dr Nicolae practices equally in Adult Congenital Heart Disease and General cardiology, with a particular interest in Echocardiography, Pulmonary Hypertension and Obstetric Cardiology. He was the Cardiology Program Education Co-ordinator until recently at The Prince Charles Hospital and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, School of Medicine.

Dr Nicolae is the current ACHD representative to the Paediatric and Congenital Executive Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. Dr Nicolae the chair for the ACHD group for development of National Standards of Care in CHD and is a member of the steering committee for the CHAANZ Registry.

Prof Amanda Nicoll is the Director of Gastroenterology at Eastern Health in Melbourne. Research interests include drug induced liver injury (hepatotoxicity), hepatocellular carcinoma, obstetric medicine involving gastroenterology, and autoimmune liver disease. She has an honorary appointment with Monash University (adj Clinical Professor).

Professor Angela Makris is a clinician researcher. She is a consultant Nephrologist and Obstetric Physician at South west Sydney based at Liverpool Hospital. Her research interests include therapies for the treatment and prevention of preeclampsia as well as post-partum management and assessment.

Britt Christensen is Head of the IBD Unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Afterher gastroenterology training, she was awardedthe Joseph B Kirsner Fellowship and completed her PhD at the University of Chicago and an intestinal ultrasound fellowship at the Ospedale Luigi Sacco in Milan, Italy.

She runs an IBD clinical and research fellowship at Royal Melbourne Hospital and is involved in multiple clinical trials. She established the first pregnancy-IBD clinic in Australia to be jointly run by a maternal foetal medicine specialist and gastroenterologist. Her other research interests include intestinal ultrasound, inflammation and pregnancy outcomes, vaccine immune response and COVID-19,novel biomarkers and pathways of inflammation and the effect of inflammation on cognitive function.

Britt is a member of the International Bowel Ultrasound Group Board. She has been an invited speaker at international conferences and has more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference abstracts.

Associate Professor Amanda Henry is a practising obstetrician at St George Hospital, Sydney and Associate Professor in the Discipline of Women’s Health, University of New South Wales. She also has honorary appointments at University of Technology Sydney and The George Institute for Global Health. A/Prof Henry’s research focus is on improving women’s long-term cardiovascular, metabolic and mental health after complicated pregnancy, particularly hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. She also undertakes clinical and implementation research focussed on improving care for women and their families during pregnancy, labour and birth. She is an active educator at both undergraduate and postgraduate level on all aspects of pregnancy care. Other current roles include as Councillor for the Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. 

May is a rheumatologist who retrained as an obstetric physician back in 2008. She has spent many years working initially as a fellow then as a consultant obstetric physician in many high-risk obstetric medicine centres in London and Oxford. Her research interests are in SLE and how pregnancy influences long term cardiovascular outcomes but earns her bread by working as a rheumatologist and head of department of obstetric medicine at New Zealand’s largest maternity unit in Middlemore Hospital. In the recent years, May has become the go to person for advice on biologics in pregnancy and she was involved in the EULAR recommendations in pregnancy in 2016. In her spare time, May can be found gardening and enjoys plants of all varieties esp. carnivorous plants

Professor David McIntyre is an Endocrinologist and Obstetric Physician based at Mater Health Services and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He has published over 240 papers (>28,000 citations), primarily in the field of medical complications of pregnancy, with a particular focus on diabetes and obesity.  In 2016, he received the Norbert Freinkel Award for diabetes in pregnancy from the American Diabetes Association.  In 2019 he was awarded both the Jørgen Pedersen Lecture by DPSG Europe and the Award Lecture for “Diabetes and Women” by the International Diabetes Federation. He is a Past President of ADIPS and of IADPSG and is currently a member of the FIGO Committee for Pregnancy and Long-Term Health.

Professor Bill Hague came to Australia in 1988 after training in the UK in Obstetric Medicine with Prof Michael de Swiet.  He is one of only a few with dual qualifications in Medicine and O&G.  He initiated the Obstetric Medicine Group of Australasia (OMGA), which eventually morphed into SOMANZ, of which he was made the first Honorary Member.  After contributing to the literature in many aspects of obstetric medicine, including the use of metformin in gestational diabetes and the diagnosis and management of hypertension in pregnancy, he now focuses on the investigation and treatment of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy.

Associate Professor Dominica Zentner is an adult cardiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, in Melbourne. She heads the Cardiac Pregnancy Service, having completed a PhD in cardiovascular changes of normal human pregnancy in 2007. Dominica is also part of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease and Cardiac Genomics clinical services at RMH. She sits on the Board of CSANZ, is the Chair of the Quality Standards Committee CSANZ and the Cardiologist representative on the Advisory Committee on Medicines, Therapeutic Goods Association. She has published several papers focussed on women with cardiac disease in pregnancy.

 Kathy Paizis is a Nephrologist and Obstetric medicine physician at Mercy Hospital of Women and Western Health Sunshine.  She graduated from University of Melbourne in 1986  and completed her PhD in Heymann nephritis – an animal model of proteinuria in 1997. She is involved in the outpatient and inpatient management of medical disorders in pregnant women. She is also involved in teaching the basics of obstetric medicine to physician trainees through the RACP lecture series. As a member of the Austin Health nephrology research team she has been involved with projects identifying changes in salt transporter expression in urinary exosomes in pre-eclampsia.  

Dr Lisa Clarke is a specialist Haematologist and Transfusion medicine specialist who holds dual fellowship with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia. She has appointments at Sydney Adventist Hospital, the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and Laverty Pathology. Her special interests include Obstetric Haematology, Transfusion Medicine and Obstetric Haematology, Thrombosis and Haemostasis

Lisa has completed a Master of Clinical Epidemiology and has been published in the areas of Iron deficiency, Inherited bleeding disorders and Obstetric patient blood management.

Lisa is a member of the Haematology in Obstetrics and Women’s health Collaborative Steering Committee and lead of the Australian New Zealand Iron Optimisation Collaborative.

Associate Professor Shilpa Jesudason (MBBS, PhD, FRACP) is an academic nephrologist and Chair of the Clinical Research Group at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplant Service (CNARTS). She is the lead investigator for Pregnancy and Kidney Research Australia and Chair of the ANZDATA Registry Parenthood Working Group. She runs a state-wide obstetric nephrology service for preconception counselling, antenatal and postnatal care for women with all stages of CKD and kidney failure in pregnancy. Her research program employs a broad array of methodologies to investigate parenthood outcomes and best care for women with kidney disease.

Associate Professor Lata Vadlamudi is a Senior Staff Specialist in Neurology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; Epileptologist within the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program; Metro North Clinician Research Fellow; and Neurosciences Theme Leader at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research.

Clinical interests include integrating genomics into clinical care and management of women with epilepsy, in particular during pregnancy. Current research projects include developing patient-specific brain organoid models to personalise epilepsy care and a current Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) stem cell therapies mission entitled Personalising Epilepsy Regimes with Stem cells and artificial Intelligence models for Superior Treatment outcomes (PERSIST); genomic and epigenomic studies in epilepsy, with a particular interest in twin studies.

Dr Helen Barrett is Director of Obstetric Medicine at The Royal Hospital for Women, Randwick NSW and a conjoint Associate Professor UNSW Medicine. Dr Barrett undertakes clinical care for women with high-risk complex pregnancy across the breadth of Obstetric Medicine. Outside pregnancy, Dr Barrett's clinical focus is on diabetes and endocrinology in Young Adults and Adults. Her primary research focuses on understanding maternal, placental metabolism in complex pregnancy and how they relate to the microbiota. Dr Barrett has been an investigator in many observational and randomised controlled trials of management in pregnancy.

Briony is an obstetric medicine physician and haematologist who completed her fellowship in 2012. She worked as a fellow at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne and Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital in London researching and studying where she wants to most make an impact in women’s’ health – venous thromboembolism in pregnancy. She works at several major Melbourne metropolitan teaching hospitals including the Royal Women’s, Box Hill and Sunshine hospitals as well as running a private practice in obstetric medicine. She is passionate about providing sound pre-pregnancy counselling and working with a multi-disciplinary team to help women with underlying medical issues achieve the best outcomes in their pregnancy. She is actively involved in researching her topic of interest and teaches obstetric haematology and obstetric medicine to physician, pathology and obstetric trainees, obstetricians, gynaecologists and midwives.

She is published in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents at conferences both nationally and internationally.

David Tanous is a consultant and interventional cardiologist at Westmead Public and Private Hospitals. For his fellowship, he spent several months at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead before spending two and half years at Toronto General Hospital, the largest adult congenital heart disease centre in North America, where  he sub-specialised in adult congenital heart diseases and cardiac diseases in pregnancy.

 He currently performs the majority of complex adult congenital heart disease catheter interventions for patients in New South Wales. He is actively involved in the management of patients with pulmonary hypertension at the Westmead Pulmonary Hypertension clinic and the management of cardiac diseases in pregnancy with the Westmead Hospital High Risk obstetric unit.

Dr Stephanie Cox is a specialist physician in Obstetric Medicine, Endocrinology/Diabetes and Internal Medicine, based in Auckland, NZ

Stephanie attended Medical School at the University of Auckland and completed dual specialist physician training in General Medicine and Endocrinology at Rotorua, Christchurch and Waikato Hospitals before returning to Auckland to complete a fellowship in Obstetric Medicine. She was awarded the SOMANZ Certificate of Obstetric Medicine in 2016.

Stephanie is currently Clinical Lead for the Diabetes in Pregnancy Service, Te Toka Tumai, and is an experienced Obstetric Physician who is passionate about helping patients and their whānau plan and achieve healthy pregnancies.