Paediatric Asthma Working Party
Associate Professor Shivanthan Shanthikumar is a paediatric respiratory physician and researcher specializing in childhood asthma. He is the lead of the Complex Asthma service at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and head of the Respiratory group at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Associate Professor Shanthikumar is passionate about bridging the gap between scientific discovery and clinical practice, ensuring that new insights translate into tangible benefits for patients. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, authored to paediatric asthma guidelines through the Paediatric Improvement Collaborative, assessed quality of asthma care in Victoria, and served as a clinical lead of the SaferCare Victoria Improving Childhood Asthma Management program. He regularly delivers education to clinicians regarding childhood asthma. He also works closely with consumers via multiple collaborations with Asthma Australia. Through his clinical care, research, education, and advocacy, Associate Professor Shanthikumar hopes to significantly reduce the burden associated with childhood asthma.
Prof Simon Craig is a Paediatric Emergency Physician at Monash Children’s Hospital, Adjunct Clinical Professor, Dept. of Paediatrics, Monash University and Honorary Research Fellow at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. In addition to his emergency qualifications, he holds postgraduate qualifications in Medical Education and Public Health.
Prof Craig has authored over 150 publications and has been awarded over $40 million no major research grants. He has diverse research interests across paediatric critical illness, acute respiratory illnesses including asthma and bronchiolitis, clinical trials and observational studies.
Prof Craig is currently chair of the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT) network. He has authored a number of Paediatric Emergency Medicine textbooks, and developed the Monash Children’s Paediatric Emergency Medication Book, which has been adapted for use internationally.
Dr Mike Forrester is a paediatric clinician-researcher with 25 years acute and ambulatory experience, and a general paediatric consultant at University Hospital Geelong.
Dr Forrester is a Snr Research Fellow with Deakin’s Institute for Health Transformation, and a nationally recognised leader in high-value, environmentally-sustainable healthcare research and implementation, recently leading the National Sustainable Asthma Care Roadmap. Recommendations arising from these roundtables, which engaged 50 organisations and sector leaders, are being progressed by the National Implementation-Committee for Quality and Sustainable Asthma Care (NICQSAR), which he co-chairs. This asthma sector coalition’s aim is to make asthma care better, safer, easier, more equitable, and environmentally sustainable for 2.8 million Australians.
Dr Forrester is a Chief Investigator (CIB) on a grant application for an NHMRC-funded pilot RCT evaluating anti-inflammatory reliever therapy (budesonide–formoterol) for adolescents presenting to emergency departments, and an AI on a 2026 CRE application in Acute Paediatric respiratory Illness.
Dr Charmaine Gray is a Paediatric Emergency Physician and Director of Research at Flinders Medical Centre Emergency Department (Adelaide). She also holds a Senior Lecturer position at Flinders University. Dr Gray is a long standing member of the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT) network and has recently been awarded her PhD which investigated the utility of asthma scores in shaping future practice in acute exacerbations of asthma. She is passionate about creating an evidence base for our care of children with asthma and incorporating the consumer voice in research. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has co-authored textbook chapters on acute asthma.
Alex Wallace is a Paediatrician at Waikato Hospital in Hamilton New Zealand, and Senior
Lecturer in Paediatrics with the University of Auckland. She undertook her Paediatric training at Waikato Hospital and subsequently at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After returning to NZ she worked as a Paediatrician at Tauranga Hospital before commencing a PhD in 2009 at the Liggins Institute under the supervision of Professor Dame Jane Harding. Since finishing her PhD, Alex has divided her time between her clinical, teaching, and research roles.
Alex’s main research interests are in the grass-roots Paediatric problems of bronchiolitis and preschool asthma. She is currently co-principal investigator of a large multi-centre randomised controlled trial investigating outcomes for children with acute moderate to severe exacerbations of preschool asthma treated with 1- versus 3-days of oral prednisolone.
Dr Libby Haskell is a paediatric emergency Nurse Practitioner, and New Zealand’s first in this specialty. She works in the Children’s Emergency Department at Starship Hospital, Auckland where she leads with clinical expertise and a commitment to improving outcomes for children and their families. Libby is also a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland and completed her PhD on improving care for infants with bronchiolitis through a cluster randomised controlled trial across 26 hospitals in New Zealand and Australia. This research was conducted within the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT) network.
As an early career researcher, Libby contributes to high-impact paediatric clinical research. Her post-doctoral position involves co-ordinating two randomised controlled trials investigating best treatment for preschool wheeze/asthma and moderate-to-severe asthma in children aged 4 to 11 years. Her research interests span paediatric respiratory conditions, fever management, and knowledge translation. She is Vice-Chair of the PREDICT executive committee, playing a key role in shaping local, regional, national and international guidelines for bronchiolitis care.
Dr Jessica Costa-Pinto is a Paediatrician at Box Hill Hospital, Eastern Health, and an early career researcher completing her PhD at Deakin University, and is passionate about improving respiratory outcomes for her patients.
She is the PhD student and a Chief Investigator on the Children’s Inpatient Research Collaboration of Australia and New Zealand’s (CIRCAN’s) first NHMRC funded (>$1.6M) trial, involving over 45 hospitals across Australia and New Zealand. The Assessing the Reduction of Recurrent admissions using OM-85 for the treatment of preschool Wheeze (ARROW) is a multi-centre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, aiming to reduce hospital presentations among preschool aged children with wheeze, and has recruited >1000 participants using a novel decentralised design.
Dr Payal Mandaliya is a Paediatric Respiratory Physician and General Paediatrician at Maitland Hospital, NSW, and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle. She is an ERS HERMES Diplomate in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine and is currently undertaking a Master’s in Sleep Medicine at the University of Sydney.
Her clinical and research work focuses on paediatric respiratory conditions, particularly asthma, preschool wheeze, and congenital thoracic malformations. She is a site investigator for the multicentre ARROW trial and has published in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr Mandaliya is actively involved in clinical governance and medical education through her work with the RACP, AMC Workplace-Based Assessment program, and the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation. She is committed to improving paediatric asthma care through streamlined management and the standardisation of asthma action plans across care settings.
Sam Dalton is a Respiratory & Sleep Paediatrician working at Christchurch Hospital, Waitaha Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand. He undertook Paediatric training in Christchurch, then Respiratory & Sleep fellowships in Melbourne at Monash Children’s Hospital and The Royal Children’s Hospital. Sam enjoys the full spectrum of Paediatric Respiratory & Sleep care from practical problem-solving for patients and whānau, to contributing to national and Australasian networks, audits and guideline groups in the areas of Asthma, Cystic fibrosis, Bronchiectasis, and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea.
As an honorary Clinical Lecturer for University of Otago and as the Paediatric Representative on the RACP Aotearoa NZ Respiratory and Sleep Advanced Training committee he is keen to support others joining the field. Sam has followed a primarily clinical rather than research career path but has been involved in publications on a variety of subjects and was NZ primary investigator on an international multi-site cystic fibrosis trial.
Professor Stuart Dalziel is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health Research at the University of Auckland, where he is also a Professor of Paediatrics and Emergency Medicine. Clinically he works as a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Physician in the Children’s Emergency Department at Starship Children’s Hospital, where he is also the Director of Emergency Medicine Research.
Stuart’s research is strongly aligned to his everyday clinical practice as a Paediatric Emergency Medicine Physician. It focuses on both medical emergencies, such as status epilepticus, and common paediatric conditions, such as asthma, bronchiolitis, and the use of paracetamol and ibuprofen. Stuart has undertaken one of the largest randomised controlled trial of children in New Zealand looking at prevention of asthma and has lead trials of ICS/LABA in children. Stuart has received over $NZ85 million in research support and has published over 280 peer-reviewed papers.
