ProfessorPaul Robinson

Clinical Professor Dr Paul Robinson is a clinician researcher within the University of Sydney’s Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health and is a Senior Staff Specialist in the Department of Respiratory Medicine at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. He is thre Lloyd Nuttall Reseach Fellow and an established member of The Children’s Chest Research Centre within Kids Research, the research division of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network. He is a Research Associate in the Airway Physiology and Imaging Group at the Woolcock Medical Research Institute.

His research team's work targets improving early lung disease detection and improving monitoring of paediatric lung disease once established through the development and translation into clinical practice of novel peripheral airway function tests. These tests are highly feasible throughout the paediatric age range (including infants and pre-schoolers). The “peripheral airways” these tools probe may be small in size but account for a vast amount of the total lung volume (almost 95%). Conventional lung function techniques fail to assess these smaller airways, leading many people to previously view them as existing within a “silent lung zone” where disease could develop undetected. The importance of these smaller airways in disease emergence and progression has already been confirmed in important diseases, such as Cystic Fibrosis, Asthma, and is being established in other settings, such as post lung and/or bone marrow transplantation.

Prof Robinson’s research program focuses on two particular peripheral airway function techniques, Multiple breath washout (MBW) and Oscillometry (previously known as the Forced Oscillation technique, FOT). He leads international MBW standardisation work to ensure testing is not only performed correctly, but efficiently and with equipment that accurately reflects what is happening in the lungs. He played a lead role in the establishment of an international Central Over-Reading Centre (CORC) network which delivers MBW training and quality control of data for international investigator-led and pharmaceutical company sponsored clinical trials. He is the Director of the Australian CORC.

In addition to efforts to define the international research agenda for Early Lung Disease Detection, through co-ordination of meetings of international experts in the field, he occupies prominant roles within international respiratory societies. As the Chair of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Paediatric Assembly Program Committee he was responsible for programing the Paediatric content for the 2021 ATS conference. He is the Paediatric Associate Editor for the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (#2 ranked respiratory medical journal).

Ongoing local research is funded by both national and international grants through strong national and international collaborative networks established with leading researchers. Incorporation of advanced imaging techniques, using both CT and MRI, allow structure-function relationships in early disease to be better defined and understood. “Having managed these children for many years, and seen how established lung disease can be before our previous techniques detected impairment, this work is critical to improve long term outcomes by detecting and intervening at an earlier stage” he says “In established disease, targeting this lung region using these tools also offers exciting potential to achieve better disease stability”.

The Discipline of Paediatrics and Child Health has profiled his research.

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