Professor Susan Niermeyer (USA)

Susan Niermeyer MD, MPH is Professor of Paediatrics in the Section of Neonatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Centre. She practices and teaches at Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado Hospital, and community hospital nurseries in the Denver area. She also serves as faculty in epidemiology and the Centre for Global Health at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Susan’s clinical and educational areas of emphasis include neonatal resuscitation, cardiopulmonary physiology in infancy, and global neonatal survival. She has served as co-chair of the American Academy of Paediatrics Neonatal Resuscitation Program Steering Committee and editor of the ILCOR (International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation) neonatal resuscitation guidelines in 2000.

She currently serves as editor-in-chief for Helping Babies Breathe, the AAP educational program for neonatal resuscitation in resource-limited settings, and continuity editor for the suite of Helping Babies Survive programs, including also Essential Care for Every Baby and Essential Care for Small Babies.

Susan’s research interests centre on adaptation in the neonatal period, with a focus on cardiopulmonary adaptation and low birth weight at high altitude. Her high-altitude research has included study of infant oxygenation in Lhasa, Tibet, studies of infant birth weight and cardiopulmonary adaptation in La Paz, Bolivia, studies of pulmonary hypertension and cardiopathies in Peruvian children, and pulse oximetry screening for critical congenital heart disease at moderate to high altitude in Colorado.

Underlying her interest in neonatal resuscitation and high-altitude physiology is a strong commitment to the health of children around the world, especially those in isolated and resource-constrained regions. This is reflected in her continuing role with the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) in development and implementation of the Helping Babies Survive suite of educational materials, aimed at reducing the major causes of newborn deaths and improving global neonatal survival. She is also a Senior Medical Advisor for Newborn Health with the United States Agency for International Development and technical consultant to the World Health Organization for development of global programs in perinatal education. 

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Professor Colm O'Donnell (Dublin)

Colm O’Donnell is a Consultant Neonatologist at the National Maternity Hospital; Professor at the UCD School of Medicine; and Director of Clinical Research at the National Children’s Research Centre, all in Dublin, Ireland. He worked in General Medicine and Paediatrics in Ireland before moving to Melbourne, Australia to pursue further training in Neonatology. He completed a Fellowship and was a Consultant Neonatologist at the Royal Women’s Hospital and at NETS Victoria; and was awarded a PhD by the University of Melbourne for his research on resuscitation of newborns.

Since returning to Ireland in 2006, he has combined clinical research with a busy clinical workload. He has led many randomised clinical trials of interventions in the delivery room and neonatal intensive care unit, including international multicentre trials and trials of investigational medicinal products. He has been a member of the Neonatal Task Force of ILCOR since 2006 and is a member of the Neonatal Review Group of the Cochrane Collaboration.

He is the Chief Investigator of the POPART study, an international multicentre randomised controlled trial of prophylactic oropharyngeal surfactant at birth to prevent respiratory failure in premature babies. POPART is supported by PedCRIN, an initiative of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 funding programme, and provides some respite from the demands of juvenile Camogie management and a burgeoning career in rock.

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Dr Theresa Mariero Olasveengen (Norway)

Dr Olasveengen is a senior researcher and anaesthesiologist at Oslo University Hospital with a broad interest in cardiac arrest research; from qualitative studies in emergency medical dispatch to clinical studies, randomized trials and basic animal research.

Current research is concentrated on how to protect the brain in the immediate post-arrest phase. She is also chair of the International Liaison Committee On Resuscitation (ILCOR) Basic Life Support task force, and co-chair of the European Resuscitation Councils Basic Life Support Science and Education Committee, working to evaluate our current knowledge base in resuscitation science and translate this knowledge into guidelines and education.

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