PhD projects

Why are babies in SCNs/NICUs at higher risk of permanent hearing loss?

Project description:

This PhD offers potential for practice changes that could improve lifelong hearing for infants admitted to SCNs/NICUs. Supervised by leading researchers in children’s hearing loss, epidemiology, paediatrics and audiology, it offers immense opportunities to establish a career and leadership in transformative newborn and child hearing loss research within the GenV initiative and beyond. 

Around one in five liveborn babies require admission to a special care nursery (SCN) or neonatal care unit (NICU). Admission to SCN/NICU is a known risk factor for permanent hearing loss. Compared to healthy babies, those admitted to NICUs are at 8 times the risk of hearing loss, with many hypothesized and interacting causal factors including immaturity, anaemia, infection/inflammation, ototoxic drugs, environmental noise, jaundice, intracranial haemorrhage/encephalopathy, hypoxia and genetic susceptibility. Large sample sizes and variations in care that equate to natural experiments are needed to clarify causal pathways and thence effective prevention and treatment. 

This PhD project will be conducted within the ‘Generation Victoria’ cohort, the only mega-birth cohort now recruiting internationally, targeting all 150,000 Victorian births over two years from 2021 and encompassing Victoria’s 5 NICUs and 40 SCNs. You will help set up a new statewide SCN data registry within GenV within which you will study critical SCN/NICU causal to hearing loss, including objective measurement of noise in each SCN/NICU. 

Supervisors: A/Prof Valerie Sung, Dr Jing Wang, Dr Peter Carew, Prof Melissa Wake 

Investigating ‘silent’ newborn viral infections and outcomes in the GenV cohort

Project description: We are seeking a PhD candidate to examine the prevalence and outcomes of ‘silent’ newborn viral infections in the statewide GenV cohort. This PhD offers exciting potential for significant discovery in Australia’s landmark cohort study, and a research career in population health, epidemiology, infectious diseases and/or child health and development. 

Generation Victoria (GenV), Australia’s most ambitious longitudinal study, is a whole-of-state cohort targeting all 150,000 newborns born in Victoria Oct 2021-Oct 2023 and their parents, designed to explore how environmental exposures and genetics interact with biology to determine outcomes across the lifecourse. 

It is now known that viruses can establish lasting inflammatory/immune effects and/or dormant or low-grade persistence within infected individuals. Large-n population research is now showing paths from virus to disease, such as the recent discovery that Epstein Barr virus (EBV) causes subsequent multiple sclerosis. There is reason for concern that newborn viruses could precede a range of lifecourse conditions such as autism, allergy, schizophrenia and immune disorders, over and above viruses already known to cause intellectual disability and deafness. 

This project will build on a successful NHMRC grant (2021-25) with GenV and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), which uses novel CRISPR gene-editing technology to determine the population prevalence of a single virus (congenital cytomegalovirus, CMV) in GenV’s newborn saliva samples.  This PhD will add to this body of research by identifying additional viruses to add to the testing panel, reporting the prevalence of ‘silent’ newborn viruses within a Victorian sample of newborns, and to explore child health/development outcomes in the first 2 years of life and beyond. 

Supervisors: A/Prof Valerie Sung, A/Prof Gabrielle Haeusler, Prof Melissa Wake 

Use and impact of psychotropic medication in pregnancy

Project description: Up to 20% of women suffer from mood or anxiety disorders during pregnancy, whose impacts on adverse pregnancy and child outcomes could be mitigated by antenatal psychotropic medications (such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative-hypnotics and other sleep medications). While these medications appear safe in pregnancy, the knowledge base is incomplete, so some mothers choose against needed medication due to fear it may affect their unborn baby. This PhD student will work within the landmark ‘Generation Victoria’ (GenV) cohort, targeting all 150,000 babies born over two years (Oct 2021-Oct 2023) and their mothers at all 58 birthing hospitals in the state of Victoria, comprising consent, biosamples, and wide-ranging exposures and outcomes including administrative and clinical data. The student will contribute to creating a unique whole-state prescribing dataset within GenV by linkage/access to both primary care/outpatient medicines (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)) and birthing hospitals prescribing data during pregnancy and the perinatal period. They will map ante/perinatal psychotropic medication use in the GenV cohort and then use causal techniques (including consideration of regional variations in medication use) to assess impacts on perinatal and infant/toddler outcomes such as language development, fine motor skills, and body composition. 

Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Dr Jessika Hu, Prof Peter Coghill

Do we have sufficient safe medicine use information for pregnant women and their offspring?

Project description: Most women are prescribed at least one medicine during pregnancy. However, data are scant regarding the safety of medicines exposures for infants, as >98% of medicines do not have evidence regarding teratogenic risks and 73% of them have no human data. This PhD student will work within the landmark ‘Generation Victoria’ (GenV) cohort, targeting all 150,000 babies born over two years (Oct 2021-Oct 2023) and their mothers at all 58 birthing hospitals in the state of Victoria, and comprising consent, biosamples, and wide-ranging exposure and outcomes. The student will contribute to creating a unique whole-state prescribing dataset within GenV by linkage/access to both primary care/outpatient medicines (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)) and birthing hospitals prescribing data during pregnancy and the perinatal period. Exploring the  expected systematic variation in prescribing patterns by hospital region, size and sector, they will investigate pathways from prescribing policies to variations in medication use and thence pregnancy and newborn outcomes, seeking causal insights into medicine benefits and safety. The landmark GenV platform thus offers immense opportunities to establish a career with leadership in pregnancy pharmacovigilance and child health research.    

Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Dr Jessika Hu