Dr Philip Berger

Senior Research Fellow

The Ritchie Centre

Dr Philip Berger is part of The Ritchie Centre’s Fetal, Neonatal and Child Health group.

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.

His second area of research focus relates to 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

From February 2008 to December 2009, Dr Berger served as Acting Director of The Ritchie Centre after the retirement of Professor Adrian Walker.