Conjoint Professor Paul Robinson is a clinician-researcher and Research Leader within the Airway Physiology and Imaging Group. He is the Deputy Director of the Children’s Health Environment Program within the Child Health Research Centre (CHRC) at the University of Queensland and Senior Staff Specialist in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane.
He is a medical graduate of Manchester University, England and completed his Respiratory and Sleep medicine training at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. His PhD, awarded by the University of Sydney focused on the “Utility of Peripheral Lung Function Tests in Paediatric Respiratory Disease”.
His current research is on the role of peripheral airway function tests – specifically multiple breath washout and oscillometry – in early lung disease detection and ongoing monitoring of established disease. His work focuses on important obstructive lung diseases (e.g. asthma, cystic fibrosis and pulmonary graft vs host disease developing post bone marrow transplantation) and understanding the impacts of environmental exposures (e.g. ultrafine particle air pollution and bushfire smoke). These tests have been adapted for use outside hospital settings to enable field studies examining the impact of air pollution, strategies to address important health inequities in indigenous populations and the development of a parent-supervised remote monitoring strategy for asthma.
Conjoint Professor Robinson has led the development and standardisation of novel measures of lung function across the entire ranges from infancy onwards, facilitating the development of commercial equipment available for widespread use. His standing as and international expert, both in terms of clinical and research experience, has led to broader leadership roles at national and international levels.