Professor David Paterson and Professor Michael O’Sullivan

Professor David Paterson

Title: Research strategy for UQCCR in 2022

Professor David Paterson is Director of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Brisbane. He also serves as an Infectious Diseases Physician at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Professor Paterson was previously Chief of Transplant Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Prof Paterson is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed publications in the medical literature and is Australia’s most cited Infectious Diseases Physician. Expertscape ranks him in the top 5 researchers in the field of “microbial drug resistance” worldwide. He is on the Steering Committee of the NIH funded Antibiotic Resistance Leadership Group and is on the editorial board of the Infectious Diseases Society of America journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases. He is a Fellow of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

Professor Paterson’s major interest is in clinical trials of antimicrobial agents. He was lead investigator on the MERINO trial which randomised more than 300 patients with bloodstream infections due to ceftriaxone resistant organisms to meropenem or piperacillin/tazobactam. This research was published in JAMA in 2018 and has had more than 150,000 page views. Prof Paterson is currently lead investigator, trial steering committee member or DSMB Chair on seven other major international randomised clinical trials.

Professor Michael O’Sullivan

Title: Implementation of Research and Change in Practice: the RBWH Strategy

Michael O’Sullivan is professor and group leader at UQCCR. He is also consultant neurologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, part of the regional clot retrieval service for stroke, and leads a specialist clinic for consequences of traumatic brain injury. Prior to relocating to Australia, he was Reader in Clinical Neuroscience, Consultant Neurologist, and vascular theme lead of the National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia at King’s College London (2012-2017). Mike’s research interests are in brain networks, the effects of injury and mechanisms of plasticity and recovery. His work has provided major insights into mechanisms of recovery, including revealing a role of the cholinergic system in neural adaptation to injury and showing that structures in the brain that support learning and memory also support recovery. His research applies advanced structural and functional imaging techniques including diffusion MRI, fMRI, PET and EEG and connectomics. He is the Brisbane Lead Investigator of a new NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Vascular Cognitive Impairment and a member of the Local Organising Committee for the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism Congress, Brain and Brain PET, due to take place in Brisbane in 2024.

In 2021, Mike joined the Executive Leadership Team of RBWH as Director of Research and Implementation. RBWH is the second largest hospital in Australia and a major regional centre for critical care, major trauma, burns and neurosciences. Over 400 of the staff at RBWH identify as clinical researchers and RBWH hosts over 700 individual research projects. Despite this, the implementation of new models of care is failing to keep pace with increasing health demand. Accelerating bench-to-bedside translation is an imperative for health care in Australia as a whole.