Prof Geoffrey Dobson

qualifications: geoffrey.dobson@jcu.edu.au

position: Professor, Heart and Trauma Research Laboratory

department: Medicine and Dentistry

Australia

Dr Geoffrey Dobson's research strategy at JCU exploits the August Krogh Principle, which states that: "for any question in science there is one animal best suited to study it". The approach involves tapping into hundreds of millions of years of animal adaptations in Nature's own laboratory, and developing new therapeutics to treat human disease. His innovations borrow from natural hibernators and include a new normokalemic 'polarizing' cardioplegia to stop the heart in cardiac surgery, which is currently used in the USA, and at lower doses developing a resuscitation fluid to rescue soldiers suffering catastrophic blood loss on the battlefield. The trauma targets are being developed in collaboration with the US military, and have clinical relevance in tropical, rural and remote prehospital and retrieval medicine. More recently, Dr Dobson's team is developing new applications to treat post-partum hemorrhage, which is the leading cause of direct and preventable death of women globally.