PREGNANCY IN WOMEN WITH CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE OF ALL STAGES, INCLUDING WOMEN ON DIALYSIS AND WITH KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS
With
Professor Shilpanjali Jesudason
Head of Unit, Central and Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service (CNARTS),
Royal Adelaide Hospital,
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) &
Clinical Professor, University of Adelaide, South Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Adelaide, South Australia | March 2025
Professor Shilpanjali Jesudason is an academic nephrologist and Head of Department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplant Service, South Australia.
From 2017-2020, she was the Clinical Director of Kidney Health Australia, the peak body for patients with kidney disease. In this role she developed a passion for advancing kidney disease education in primary care.
She is the founder and Program Lead for Pregnancy and Kidney Research Australia, co-leads the new ISN Train the Trainer Program for Pregnancy and Kidney Disease, and is the inaugural chair of the Australian and Zealand Dialysis and Transplantation Registry (ANZDATA) Parenthood working group.
She is founding chair of the ANZ Society of Nephrology Pacific Working Group, and has been a supporter of nephrology development in her birth country of Fiji.
In 2025, she was awarded the Roscoe R. Robinson award for outstanding contributions to nephrology, by the International Society of Nephrology.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9695-0761
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Biostatistics in Clinical Trials
As a biostatistician working in research and clinical settings, Kate Francis plays a vital role in ensuring all projects adhere to best practice guidelines and are transparently reported. She has served as the lead statistician for the analysis of clinical trials across a broad range of subject areas, including neonatal resuscitation, BCG for allergy and infection, convulsive status epilepticus and her work has been published in the top journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet. Most recently she was awarded the 2025 Excellence in Trial Statistics Award for her work on the PLUSS trial.
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Stem cells used for age-related macular degeneration
Dr. Jenna Hall is a passionate and accomplished biologist with expertise in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) culture, disease modelling, and high-throughput automated systems. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne, where her research focused on using iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells to study age-related macular degeneration. Dr Hall’s technical skillset spans manual and automated cell reprogramming and differentiation, quantitative microscopy-based phenotyping, and large scale -omics analysis.
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Novel forms of brain stimulation & psychedelic assisted psychotherapy
Professor Paul Fitzgerald is the Head of the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University. He is an academic psychiatrist with a MBBS degree, Masters of Psychological Medicine and research PhD. He has conducted an extensive range of experimental studies and clinical trials, focused on the development of novel treatment options for patients with mental health conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, PTSD, autism and Alzheimer’s disease.
