Dr Philip Berger

Acting Centre Director

Ritchie Centre for Baby Health Research

Dr Berger received his training in comparative physiology as a graduate student at the University of Melbourne and during postdoctoral positions in the Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen in West Germany and at the Ohio State University. He is Head of the Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology group whose research has two principal focuses. The first is to improve current understanding of the causes of poor neurocognitive outcome in preterm infants through experimental and clinical studies and the application of powerful mathematical models that provide insight into the causes of apnoea of prematurity and its effects on oxygen delivery to the tissues. A second research focus is on the maturation of motor control in the early gestation fetus, with the aim of establishing how the brain first exerts control over the spinal cord early in ontogeny, and how loss of this controlling input leads to abnormal motor and autonomic function in patients with spinal cord injury

In February 2008, Dr Berger was appointed as the Acting Centre Director of the Ritchie Centre for Baby Health Research after the retirement of Professor Adrian Walker.