Meet Our Experts in Neonatology
Catarina Liz
Catarina Liz
Catarina Liz is a pediatrician and neonatologist at the Neonatology Department of the Centro Materno Infantil do Norte, part of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António in Porto, Portugal.
She holds a postgraduate degree in Neonatal Medicine from the Institute of Health Sciences at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She is a certified Instructor in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) by the American Heart Association and an Instructor-in-Training in Neonatal Life Support with the European Resuscitation Council.
Dr. Liz is the author or co-author of 20 scientific articles in the fields of pediatrics and neonatology and has presented numerous studies at both national and international conferences. Her work has been recognized with several distinctions, including the Best Poster Award at the XXVIII European Congress of Perinatal Medicine, the UENPS Prize for Best Abstract in 2022, and the Best Article of the Issue from Acta Scientific Pediatrics in 2023.
Elisa Proença
Elisa Proença
Elisa Proença, MD, is a Pediatrician, Neonatologist, and Clinical Researcher with over 20 years of experience in neonatal intensive care. A national leader in neonatal haemodynamics, she was trained in echocardiography in 2000 and has pioneered its use in Portuguese NICUs, coordinating hands-on training for neonatologists in partnership with pediatric cardiology. As Clinical Manager of the Level 3 NICU at Centro Materno Infantil do Norte, she promotes the integration of multimodal monitoring and advanced technologies, and regularly lectures on these topics. She has over 90 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 14, i10-index 22) and is currently pursuing an MSc in AI in Healthcare.
Harish Chellani
Harish Kumar Chellani
Distinguished Scientist, Society of Applied Studies. New Delhi
WHO Consultant for Implementation Research
Former. Head of Department & In charge Newborn Unit, Department of Pediatrics,
Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and associated Safdarjung Hospital New Delhi
- Trained at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston for Improvement of Quality in Health Services and at Pennsylvania Hospital, University of Philadelphia, USA, for Clinical Fellowship in Neonatal Transport Medicine.
- Worked as consultant to SAARC nations on behalf of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of External Affairs, GOI, for improving maternal and newborn care.
- Had been the Principal investigator for the Immediate Kangaroo Mother Care Study trial from India published in NEJM 2021 This led to concept of Mother Newborn Care Unit and Zero separation at the facility.
Jane Harding
Professor Dame Jane Harding
Distinguished Professor Dame Jane Harding, (DNZM, BSc, MBChB, DPhil, FRACP, FRSNZ)
Professor of Neonatology, Liggins Institute
Distinguished Professor Dame Jane Harding is a neonatologist based at the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland. Her research concerns growth before and after birth, blood glucose regulation in the newborn, and the long-term consequences of treatments given around the time of birth.
Amongst her many awards are the Howard Williams Medal (Royal Australasian College of Physicians), the 2019 Women of Influence Supreme Award, the Rutherford Medal (Royal Society of New Zealand) and the Prime Minister’s Science Prize. She is currently President of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.
Liane Correia-Costa
Liane Correia-Costa
Liane Correia-Costa completed her Integrated Master in Medicine in 2008 and obtained a PhD in Clinical Research and Health Services in 2015 from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, with a thesis entitled "Inflammation related to childhood obesity and injury vascular - impact on the kidney". She is a Pediatric assistant in the Pediatric Nephrology Department at Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Porto and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at ICBAS, University of Porto. She coordinates the Education and Research Unit at Centro Materno-Infantil. Her research focuses on cardiovascular risk and chronic kidney disease in children, with several international publications.
Maria João Lage
Maria João Lage
Doctor Maria João Lage, Consultant, Neonatology, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Dona Estefânia Hospital, Lisbon, Portugal.
Dr Maria João Lage is the coordinating member in the Patient Safety Group of a large Hospital Trust in Lisbon (since 2011). She graduated in Medicine from the Medical College of Lisbon and underwent postgraduate training in Neonatology, subsequently gaining an MSc in Quality and Safety in Healthcare at Imperial College, London (2010). In addition to her clinical work in the NICU, she started the ongoing e-learning International Course for Health Quality and Patient Safety at the National School of Public Health in Lisbon. She is a founding and board member of the Portuguese Paediatric Quality and Patient Safety Society.
Reema Garegrat
Reema Garegrat
Reema Garegrat completed neonatal sub speciality training in India and joined the Centre for Perinatal Neuroscience at Imperial College London in 2022. She is the lead fellow for the EMBRACE (Erythropoietin Monotherapy for Neonatal Encephalopathy in Low and Middle-income countries) trial involving 504 babies from South Asia. She is also the co-lead for the neonatal encephalopathy module for MSc in Neonatology at Imperial College London. She is the neurotraining lead for the COMET trial which is currently recruiting neonates with mild HIE across the globe from UK and Europe.
Ronit Pressler
Ronit Pressler
Ronit is Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London. She is also Associate Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the UCL-Institute of Child Health.
Her research interests focus on neonatal seizures, particularly their diagnosis and treatment, as well as paediatric EEG and epilepsy. She has been chairing a number of international task forces and workshops on neonatal seizures including the ILAE neonatal seizure classification task force and the neonatal guidelines task force and is co-director of the ILAE course ‘EEG in the first year of life’.
Wally Carlo
Wally Carlo
Wally is a Distinguished Professor and the Dixon Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is Director of Nurseries at the University of Alabama Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Alabama and co-Director of Neonatology. He is the recipient of several awards including the Virginia Apgar Award, the Douglas Richardson Award for Perinatal and Pediatric Healthcare Research Award, and the Southern Society for Pediatric Research Founders Award.
In addition to being an active clinician, Wally conducts clinical research in the US and in developing countries. His research focuses on reducing mortality and major morbidities during early childhood in the US and developing countries. He has published over 700 original manuscripts, edited three books, and written multiple chapters. He has led collaborative large-scale clinical trials neonatal and perinatal research including the SUPPORT Trial, the First Breath trials, the BRAIN-HIT Trial, the MoCHA Trial, and the A-PLUS Trial, research that has resulted in multiple national and international guidelines and transformed neonatal care. When implemented, the First Breath Trial interventions will reduce 1,000,000 neonatal deaths per year. He recently led the A-PLUS Trial, the first large scale trial that reduced maternal sepsis, the third cause of maternal mortality worldwide.
When not working, Wally enjoys time with his wife, 4 children, and 13 grandchildren especially at the beach.
Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman
Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman
Dr. Gyamfi-Bannerman is the Samuel SC Yen Endowed Chair,
tenured Professor, and Department Chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology,
and Reproductive Sciences at University of California, San Diego.
She is the Immediate Past President of the Society for Maternal-Fetal
Medicine and is board certified in both obstetrics and gynecology and
maternal-fetal medicine. Her research is on obstetric complications
with a primary focus on preterm birth prevention. Her clinical practice
includes caring for high-risk patients, performing detailed ultrasounds
and prenatal diagnosis.
Dr. Gyamfi-Bannerman is also a proficient, NIH-funded researcher
working on various clinical trials. She is currently the Steering
Committee Chair for 2 randomized trials: 1) the ENRICH trial, an
NHLBI-funded study that randomizes home visitors to enriched
content versus usual contact for pregnant people through 2 years
postpartum to assess cardiovascular health, and 2) the Gates-funded
PEARLS trial, a randomized trial of aspirin dosing to prevent preterm
preeclampsia in LMIC. She also conducts research in the areas of
preterm birth, antenatal corticosteroids, maternal morbidity, and health
disparities and has over 250 publications.
Hussnain Mirza
Hussnain Mirza
Fellowship Program Director. Neonatal Perinatal Medicine
Attending Neonatologist. Advent Health for Children
Associate Professor of Pediatrics.
UCF College of Medicine, Orlando. Florida. USA
Dr Mirza is the fellowship program director at Advent Health for Children, an attending neonatologist, a clinical scientist and an expert user of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) and targeted neonatal echocardiography (TNE). He has an academic interest in studying neonatal hemodynamics, management of patent ductus arteriosus, pulmonary hypertension in preterm infants and bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Dr Mirza has published a randomized controlled trial for iNO treatment of preterm infants with echocardiographic evidence of early pulmonary hypertension. He is currently working with a porcine model of neonatal hypoxic respiratory failure to study innovative interventions for treatment of resistant hypoxic respiratory failure. He is co-chair of physician leadership committee of American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and member of the National Ad Hoc committee of BPD collaborative, USA.
John D. Lantos
John D. Lantos
John D. Lantos, M.D., is a pediatrician and bioethicist. His work has shaped global conversations on ethical issues in clinical pediatrics and research. He helped develop and run world-famous bioethics centers at both The University of Chicago and University of Missouri. His NIH-supported research on ethics and genomics challenged the optimism of Frances Collins and Barack Obama about the wisdom of genome sequencing for healthy newborns. His current writing explores the ways that genomics and AI represent fundamental challenges to our ideals of humanistic medicine.
Kathy Burgoine
Kathy Burgoine
Dr. Kathy Burgoine, is a UK-trained paediatrician dedicated to advancing neonatal care in resource-limited settings. Since 2014, Kathy has worked in partnership with Mbale Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda and Born on the Edge, a UK-registered charity, to improve outcomes for neonates in Eastern Uganda. She is passionate about simple, sustainable, and affordable solutions, particularly for preterm infants. Kathy recently led a feasibility trial on continuous positive airway pressure in the delivery room and is currently leading a randomized controlled trial on emollient use in preterm babies. Her “Bridge to Breastfeeding” program highlights the power of family-centred care, human milk banking, and lactational support in transforming neonatal survival in low-resource environments.
Leslie Young
Leslie Young
Leslie Young, MD is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine and a neonatologist at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital in the United States. Her research is focused on optimizing the care provided to infants with in-utero opioid exposure and improving long-term outcomes for these infants and their families.
Dr. Young is involved in numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored research programs. She served as principal investigator for the Eating, Sleeping, Consoling for Neonatal Opioid withdrawal (ESC-NOW) clinical trial which was conducted at hospitals across the United States and published in the NEJM in 2023. Currently, she serves as a primary investigator for several ongoing studies looking to establish a standard of care for infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal. In addition to this, Dr. Young works to increase representation of rural and underserved populations in research as an investigator in the ECHO IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network and looks to improve the efficiency of clinical trials through innovative trial design and conduct.
Sandra Pereira
Sandra Pereira
Sandra Pereira is a pediatrician and neonatologist at the Neonatology Department of the Centro Materno Infantil do Norte, part of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António in Porto, Portugal.
She holds a postgraduate degree in Neonatal Medicine from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, ICBAS) of the University of Porto.
Her main clinical and research interests include functional echocardiography in the neonatal population, with a particular focus on its role in hemodynamic assessment and individualized management of critically ill newborns.
Dr. Sandra Pereira is the author or co-author of several scientific articles in the fields of pediatrics and neonatology and has presented numerous studies at both national and international conferences. Her work was recognized with distinctions, including the Best Oral Presentation at the 49th edition of the National Congress of Neonatology, as well as honorable mentions.
Thomas Abrahamsson
Anna Coutsoudis
Anna Coutsoudis
Prof Emeritus Anna Coutsoudis is a public health scientist, now retired from the Department of Paediatrics & Child Health at the University KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. She remains passionate about respectful primary health care especially for disempowered mothers and children and the use of appropriate, context-specific strategies, to improve health. She has published 170 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and served on various WHO guideline/scientific advisory groups. In recognition of her contributions, she was awarded the Science for Society Gold Medal award by the Academy of Science (South Africa) and received a lifetime award from the Nutrition Society of South Africa.
Jan Miletin
Jan Miletin
Prof Jan Miletin graduated from Charles University Prague in 1999 (awarded MD). He was awarded PhD in 2021 (Thesis entitled ‘Low Cardiac Output in Extremely Low Gestation Age Neonates and Intraventricular Haemorrhage’)
Prof Miletin was appointed as a Consultant Neonatologist in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin in 2009 and as UCD Clinical Professor in 2017.
He was awarded Paediatrician of the Year at the Ashville Media Group Irish Maternity and Infants Awards in 2010 and was awarded Special Merit Award in 2011.
His main areas of research interest are extreme prematurity, neonatal respiratory support and neonatal haemodynamics. He is actively involved in neonatal research and pragmatic neonatal trials and published extensively on these topics.
Neil Marlow
Neil Marlow
Neil Marlow is Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Medicine at University College London. His major academic interests have been in long-term outcomes following prematurity and he is the Director of the MRC-funded EPICure studies (www.epicure.ac.uk). He studies brain and cognitive development following very preterm birth, outcomes following asphyxia, communication in neonatal care, and continues a co-investigator on a range of UK and international cohort and randomised studies.
Neil was appointed Chair of the NHS England National Neonatal Review and subsequent Implementation Board. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2007, is an emeritus NIHR Investigator and awarded a Bliss Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Sailesh Kotecha
Sailesh Kotecha
Professor Sailesh Kotecha is Head/Professor of Child Health at Cardiff University, UK. His interests lie in delineating and treating the processes that lead to the development of chronic lung disease of prematurity (CLD). His group has conducted the AZTEC randomised control trial to assess if azithromycin decreases rates of CLD in 796 preterm born infants and are now recruiting 542 preterm born infants to the BALLOON trial assessing if enhancing trained immunity can decrease rates of lower respiratory tract infections in discharged preterm-born infants. His group are also linking these studies to longer-term outcomes using national cohorts including ALSPAC, MCS and Biobank as well as their own cohorts of RANOPs and RHiNO developing the concept of prematurity-associated lung disease or PLD in child-/adulthood following preterm birth identifying different phenotypes.
Ayse Gultekingil
Ayse Gultekingil
Assoc Prof, Head of Division of Pediatric Emergency, Baskent University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey
Tarah Colaizy
Tarah Colaizy
Tarah Colaizy is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Iowa, where she has been on the faculty since 2004. Dr. Colaizy is an active critical care clinician and teacher. She has an active research program in breastfeeding, growth, and neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants fed donor human milk, as well as outcomes of periviable infants. She serves as the PI for the Iowa center of the NICHD Neonatal Research Network. She also serves as Chair of the University of Iowa IRB, and medical director of the Mother’s Milk Bank of Iowa.
Ilana Levene
Ilana Levene
Dr Ilana Levene is a neonatal doctor working in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, United Kingdom. She has academic interests in neonatal nutrition, lactation and perinatal equity. She completed a PhD in clinical trials at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford in 2023, looking at the dynamic process of milk expression in the NICU. She recently led a Priority Setting Partnership in LGBTQIA+ Perinatal Care.
Brett Manley
Alex Stevenson
Alex Stevenson
Alex Stevenson is a Zimbabwean neonatologist and a leading global advocate for newborn health. He served as Pthe inaugural president of the African Neonatal Association. He is Co-Principal Investigator of the African Neonatal Network.
He also leads the Stevensons’ Rocket Company. The Rocket is a next-generation healthcare ecosystem; redesigned from scratch. It is built on a digital infrastructure and powered by an independently governed data trust.
