Professor Peter Dargaville

Professor Peter Dargaville trained in Neonatology at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, and at the University of California, San Francisco. He returned to Hobart in 2004, and was Director of Neonatal and Paediatric Intensive Care at RHH until March 2015. He now continues in a combined clinician-researcher role at the Royal Hobart Hospital and Menzies/UTAS. The major focus of his research is the development and implementation of new therapies for neonatal lung disease.

Prof Dargaville is the Chief Investigator of an NHMRC-funded multinational clinical trial investigating a technique of surfactant therapy (the “Hobart Method”) in premature infants with respiratory distress syndrome. He holds two other NHMRC project grants investigating ways to optimise mechanical ventilation and minimise lung injury. A further emerging research theme is that of supplemental oxygen therapy, with the hope of developing an automated control device that may effectively regulate oxygen delivery in the newborn infant with respiratory disease. Prof Dargaville is the current Chair of the Research Foundation's Scientific Research Advisory Committee.

Peter sits on the PLUSS Trial Steering Committee and Site investigator for Royal Hobart hospital.