CRE ACTIONS Chief Investigators

Professor David McGiffin CIB is the Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery & Transplantation at Alfred Health. His honours include a Fulbright Scholarship and regular inclusion in The Best Doctors in America.

He established a heart transplant program at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane before joining the University of Alabama. He has returned to Australia to provide strong surgical leadership to CRE ACTIONS.

Professor McGiffin’s research focuses on pulmonary and cardiac transplantation, cardiac support devices and cardiac surgery and its outcomes. Professor McGiffin has reviewed grants for NHMRC, National Heart Foundation (Australia) and the Canadian Medical Research Council. He is a member of the editorial boards of Heart, Lung and Circulation and the Journal of Cardiac Surgery, he was also the Associate Editor of Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (1999-2009).

Professor McGiffin has over 220 publications in peer-reviewed journals, has co-authored 26 book chapters and including pre-eminent textbook “Heart Transplantation", regarded as the standard and most comprehensive reference in the field. He has delivered over 340 national and international presentations.

Professor Nigel Lovell CIC is a Scientia Professor at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, UNSW and has been involved in VAD design and control research for over 15 years. His research focuses on physiological modelling and control, neural prosthetics and telehealth. He has published 500+ journal articles, books, chapters and refereed proceedings. Professor Lovell’s international standing as an innovator and research translator was recognised with Engineers Australia naming him as one the top 100 most influential engineers in Australia (2015). He is a board member of the Journal of Physiological Measurement, a founding board member of the Journal of Neural Engineering and a Fellow of five learned academies/ institutions in the USA, UK and Australia.

Professor Paul Bannon CID is the current Bosch Chair of Surgery and Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Central Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Chairman of The Baird Institute for Applied Heart and Lung Surgical Research, Head of Department Cardiothoracic Surgery Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Co Chair of the Institute of Academic Surgery RPAH and President of The Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons.

He has over 20 years’ experience as a surgical scientist and has a passion for translational research in the areas of congenital aortic and mitral valve disease, biomaterials and biocompatibility, limitation of blood product usage in cardiac surgery, the inflammatory response to bypass and the development of academic surgical careers. Professor Bannon’s past positions in the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons include member of the Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Supervisor of Surgical Training and Chairman of the Education and Scientific Committee and Member of the Advisory Committee to the Academy of Surgical Educators.

He is currently on the Executive of the National Cardiac Database Management Committee, the Steering Committee on the National Cardiac Device Registry and the Transcutaneous Aortic Valve Registry. Professor Bannon is also Co-Editor in Chief of the Annals of Cardiothoracic Surgery and has published widely in books, journals and conference proceedings on cardiothoracic surgery, basic science and evidence-based medicine.

Professor Geoff Tansley CIE is the Foundation Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of The Griffith University School of Engineering.

He is a professional engineer with an extensive background in research, development and translation of medical device systems, specialising in the design of implantable medical devices, particularly blood contacting devices. Professor Tansley was Chief Engineer of Ventracor Pty Ltd (1988–2004) and led a team of engineers in the development of a commercially implantable centrifugal rotary blood pump (VentrAssist) through research and into production. This system was implanted into >450 patients, with support provided to patients for >4 years.

He developed manufacturing controls, which met the rigorous demands of regulatory bodies (QSR for the FDA and EN46001 for Europe) with ISO 9001:2000 certification in 2001. He managed the IP portfolio at Ventracor for 4 years and the development of 8 world-wide patents (translatable into 40 national phase entries); to date he holds 15 patents and has 3 provisional patents in medical devices.

Professor Tansley is an active industry consultant, working with 5 medical device companies. He has authored/co-authored 45 peer-reviewed papers and delivered 50 papers at engineering and medical device conferences. He has received 3 prizes for research, 2 design awards and a NATO scholarship.

Associate Professor Vincent Pellegrino CIF is an Associate Professor at Monash University and an internationally recognised Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) expert.

Associate Professor Pellegrino is also a Senior Intensivist at The Alfred Hospital, heading the Intensive Care Unit ECMO service and has extensive clinical experience with mechanical cardio-respiratory assist devices.

Associate Professor Pellegrino co-ordinates the Alfred ECMO Course and the Alfred ECMO International Symposium and chairs the Logistics and Education Committee of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of ELSO which is the largest Australasian ECMO training program. Dr Pellegrino also teaches in Europe, Asia, the USA and the Middle East and has over 29 publications.

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Professor Jason Roberts CIG is a Pharmacist Consultant at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and a National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow with the Burns Trauma and Critical Care Research Centre, The University of Queensland.

Professor Roberts principal clinico-scientific research theme is optimization of drug therapy in the critically ill and he has been invited to present his results at national and international congresses. With Dr Kiran Shekar and Professor John Fraser, Professor Roberts has already provided some important studies characterising the effects of ECMO on antibiotic dosing requirements.

Professor Roberts serves on the Critical Review Panel for ATS/IDSA Guidelines of HAP, HCAP and VAP as well as the Australian Therapeutic Guidelines - Antibiotic. He is a Section Editor for the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents and an Associate Editor of the Journal or Pharmacy Practice and Research, the Journal for the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia. He has published 200+ papers and has 4 completed and 11 ongoing PhD students, and 5 completed and 3 ongoing Masters students.

Associate Professor Adrian Barnett is an Associate Professor at The Queensland University of Technology specialising in statistics with expertise in Bayesian methods and economic analysis.

Associate Professor Barnett has 161 peer-reviewed publications and an h-index of 41 (Google Scholar). He has first author papers in the BMJ, Epidemiology and Statistics in Medicine and has written two statistics textbooks one of which has over 2,900 citations. He is on the editorial review board of Environmental Health Perspectives (Impact factor = 7.3), the editorial board of Epidemiology (IF=5.4) and a statistical reviewer on the board of BMJ Open. He has been the main supervisor for 4 PhD students (2 ongoing) and 1 Masters student, and an associate supervisor to 5 completed, 3 ongoing PhD students and 1 completed Masters student.

Dr Shaun Gregory is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland with Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees in medical engineering at Queensland University of Technology.

Dr Gregory is the Technical Director of the Innovative Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology Laboratory at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane. He leads a research group of biomedical, mechanical and electrical engineers and specialises in MAD implantation, cannula design, anatomic fitting, in vitro and in vivo evaluation of cardiovascular devices and physiological control systems. Dr Gregory has 25 publications, 3 patents (PCT).

Dr Gregory is a reviewer for 5 high impact journals, he has an h index of 7. He has presented at national (7) and international (12) conferences and has worked at leading research institutions in Germany and the UK. He has supervised 73 Postdoctoral Fellows, PhD, Masters, Honours and intern students.