Congratulations to our recently completed PhD students!

Dr Bridgette Semple with recent PhD graduate
Rishabh Sharma, in the Department of Neuroscience

Congratulations to our four graduate research students, Mr Rishabh Sharma, Dr Bradley Gardiner, Ms Anna Beale and Mr Martin Ndubuisi Ezeani on their PhD completions on 17 February 2022!

Mr Rishabh Sharma in the Department of Neuroscience was supervised by Dr Bridgette Semple, Dr Pablo Casillas-Espinosa, and A/Prof Sandy Shultz. His thesis is titled, Systemic Inflammation after Paediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Consequences for Acute and Chronic Outcomes.

Surprising finding following infection after paediatric brain injury

Mr Rishabh Sharma, first author on the study

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of disability in young children, yet the factors contributing to poor outcomes in this population are not well understood. What most people don’t know is that patients who experience a TBI are highly susceptible to infections originating in hospitals, and are mostly acquired within the first week of hospitalization. Such infections may modify the pathobiology and recovery of TBI.

Mr Rishabh Sharma is a 3rd year PhD student supervised by Dr Bridgette Semple, A/Prof. Sandy Shultz and Dr. Pablo Casillas-Espinosa in the Department of Neuroscience at the Central Clinical School. He wanted to understand whether an additional challenge to the immune system (i.e. mimicking an infection) after paediatric TBI altered the acute outcomes in a pre-clinical mouse model.