Since graduating in 2016 she has been awarded two postdoctoral fellowships, including a Lottery Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. She has also secured several external research grants, including two prestigious grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand. Her areas of interest are varied, ranging from sleep, obesity, and feeding behaviours in young children, to social media use, youth mental health, cyberbullying, and vaccine hesitancy. Her approach to addressing these diverse issues is grounded in relationship science, and she often draws on her 10 years' experience in science communication to disseminate her research ideas both within and outside the academic community. Recently she has become particularly interested in the use of story telling and narratives to effectively communicate science information to New Zealanders.

His research focuses on the synthesis of organic molecules and whilst doing so exploring fundamental chemical principles to aid the development of efficient synthetic methods, the preparation of novel molecular structures and to answer complex biological questions.

At present Hisresearch group is working on number of different research areas including, the development of new synthetic methodologies enabling the preparation of DNA-binding molecules, the synthesis of bioactive lignans (plant derived natural products) and the synthesis of novel treatments cancer. Along with this my research group is active in the development of new synthetic methods to prepare organic molecules rich in heteroatoms, such as nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. he is also active in a number of national and international multidisciplinary research projects working on areas such as the development of new polymeric materials, particularly those using biopolymers, natural product synthesis and determination and the synthesis of labelled wine components for wine profiling.

Associate Professor Sarah Hetrick is investigating adapting online tools to enable safe communication about self-harm and suicide.

An expert in Microbiology, Simon and his team are working on enhancing treatments for severe bone infections in children.

Dr Rebecca Findlay is an expert in Optometry and vision science. She is working to understand the size of the issue of refractive error in New Zealand.

Alex's main research interests are in the grass-roots Paediatric problems of bronchiolitis and preschool wheeze/asthma. She works closely with Profs Cameron Grant and Stuart Dalziel at Starship Hospital on several projects on these topics, and is a member of both the PREDICT (Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative) and CIRCAN (Children's Inpatient Research Collaborative of Australia and New Zealand) research networks. In 2020, she co-authored on a paper documenting the findings of the WASP Study, a multi-centre randomised controlled trial investigating outcomes for wheezy preschoolers treated with three days of oral steroid compared to placebo, which showed improved respiratory outcomes in those who received steroid. The findings of this study gave rise to the question of whether a single dose of oral steroid is sufficient for the management of preschool wheeze/asthma exacerbations, providing impetus for development of the STAR Study.

Outside work, Alex lives on small lifestyle block near Hamilton with her husband and two teenagers. In her spare time she enjoys participating in women's team adventure races and writing crime fiction.

Dr Scott-Thomas has a special interest in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its growth in the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) lung.

A biomedical scientist with advanced microbiology and analytical chemistry skills, her expertise includes bacterial genetics, bacterial biosensors, microbiology, tissue culture techniques, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and electrochemistry.

Fiona is a child health researcher, clinician and advocate. She has experience in global health for children, specifically the Pacific. She is currently a research fellow for Cure Kids working on projects related to Pacific child health including Covid-19, Acute Respiratory Infection, Rheumatic Heart Disease in Fiji. She has previously been a research fellow for New Zealand’s contemporary longitudinal study Growing Up in New Zealand and has also worked as a paediatric physiotherapist and developmental coordinator with children and communities in Aotearoa, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Her PhD thesis investigated the health of primary school children in Tonga. Out of this work she has been involved in child protection advocacy in Tonga. Other research projects she is involved in include: Climate change and mental wellbeing - impacts on Pacific peoples, Infantcare practise in the Pacific and Neurodevelopmental outcomes related to alcohol exposure in the Growing Up in New Zealand study. Her areas of expertise are: global child health, Pacific child health, community engagement, resilience and wellbeing in children, child protection.

Associate Professor Mhoyra Fraser, originally from Scotland, is an experienced fetal neuroendocrinologist and physiologist with expertise in fetal brain injury. On receiving her PhD degree, based on the development of the fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis, under the supervision of Prof Mont Liggins at the Postgraduate School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, National Women’s Hospital, she moved to Canada. There she undertook postdoctoral training under the mentorship of Prof John Challis at the Lawson Research Institute, London, Ontario. A/Prof Fraser then spent several years as a Research Fellow with Prof Challis at the University of Toronto. During her time in Canada, her research primarily focused on providing a better understanding of the development and regulation of the fetal hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal axis and mechanisms of preterm birth. Preterm birth is a significant problem with respect to child health outcomes. Hence, on returning to New Zealand, A/Prof Fraser’s research has primarily focused on addressing fundamental issues associated with “being born too early”. Previously at the Liggins Institute and now at the Department of Physiology, University of Auckland, she heads the Perinatal Neuroscience Molecular Laboratory. A/Prof Fraser’s current research interests and expertise is in the use of clinically relevant whole animal models to study fetal neurophysiological, neuroinflammatory and neuroendocrine responses to adverse events during gestation such as asphyxia, hypoxia/ischemia and infection/inflammation (innate immunity) and the consequences for disease pathology. Present research goals are to investigate potential candidate therapeutic strategies to prevent or ameliorate white matter injury and/or neuronal loss in the preterm brain and to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of infection/inflammation- and asphyxia/hypoxia-ischemia- related damage and to identify clinically relevant biomarkers of preterm brain injury. Her other areas of research include studies to determine the impact of antenatal exposure to glucocorticoids or alterations in maternal nutrition on neuroendocrine function and neurogenesis in the preterm fetal brain.

Her specialist expertise is in mental health, nursing, social determinants of health, and health services for young Māori. Much of her research has focused on depression, suicide, and delivery of equity in mental health for young Māori. Prof Clark also holds a range of governance and advisory roles related to young people, Māori health, and mental health. Since 1998 Prof Clark has been the Principal Investigator and Co-Lead of the Youth2000 series of national surveys on youth health and wellbeing. She is a founding member of the national Adolescent Health Research Group. In 2022, Prof Clark joined Cure Kids' Medical & Scientific Advisory Committee.

Professor Stephen Robertson has been the Cure Kids Chair of Paediatric Genetics at the University of Otago since 2002.

Prof Robertson has gained international acclaim in his field for his expertise in the field of genetic mutations, specifically those affecting the skeleton and the brain.

He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Otago, Dunedin, where he would eventually return more than a decade later. During his absence from Otago, he held the prestigious Nuffield Scholarship at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the world-leading Oxford University. Also specialising in paediatrics, Prof Robertson is a clinician who sees children with varying degrees of malformation on a regular basis.

Prof Robertson’s work has seen him and his team discover genes that are implicated in a number of genetic disorders. These include familial disorders where a number of members of a particular family are affected with life-affecting, even fatal, conditions. One such story involved Robertson working tirelessly with a whanau in the far North who were inexplicably losing children soon after birth. After a long journey, he identified the gene which was responsible for the babies’ deaths enabling a diagnosis to be made. This was also fundamental in giving the whanau information regarding future offspring as well as the peace of mind of knowing what happened to their loved ones.

“What we’re about is helping people understand and live with disability as best they can, and part of that’s through giving information about what causes it.”

Prof Robertson and his team continue to work to characterise and better understand rare, yet significant, diseases that affect a number of New Zealand children.

Professor Dalziel is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health Research.

He is a Professor in the School of Medicine’s Departments of Surgery and Paediatrics, Director of Emergency Medicine Research and a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Specialist, Children’s Emergency Department, at Starship Children’s Hospital. He is also the current chair of the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT, Australasia’s paediatric emergency medicine research network) and Vice-Chair of the Paediatric Emergency Research Network (PERN), a collaboration of the six major international paediatric emergency medicine research networks.

Originally from Hawke’s Bay, he trained at the Universities of Otago and Auckland, returning to New Zealand over a decade ago following a fellowship post at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. Professor Dalziel’s research is strongly aligned to his everyday clinical practice as a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Specialist. It focuses on both medical emergencies, such as status epilepticus (the most common paediatric neurological emergency), and common paediatric conditions, such as asthma and bronchiolitis (the most common reason for infants to be admitted to hospital). Professor Dalziel has received numerous local and international awards for mentoring and research excellence. He is actively involved in the leadership of a number of international research networks which directly address important questions related to the acute care of children.

Professor Andrew Day holds the chair of Paediatric Research at University of Otago, Christchurch.

Professor Andrew Day undertook his medical training at University of Otago, New Zealand. After his initial paediatric training in Christchurch, he completed clinical and research fellowship training at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. In 2000, he took up appointments at the University of New South Wales and Sydney Children’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia. Professor Day then returned to NZ in 2009 to take an academic position at University of Otago (Christchurch) and a clinical position (Paediatric Gastroenterologist) at Christchurch Hospital. In 2017, Prof Day was appointed as Cure Kids Chair of Paediatric Research in Christchurch.

The overall objectives of Prof Day’s ongoing research activities are to delineate and define aspects of gastrointestinal inflammation, especially in the context of inflammatory bowel disease, and to define how interactions occurring at the gastrointestinal epithelial border between the host and the environment affect disease pathogenesis and manifestations. This has focused especially upon epithelial responses to inflammatory stimuli, host innate immune responses and to modulation of these responses with therapeutic intervention, providing clinical relevance to laboratory activities. He has an ongoing active and productive research program, with local and international collaborations, leading to more than 220 peer-reviewed publications and numerous other presentations or publications.