Rate My Professor Franz Babl

Professor Franz Babl is the Professor of Paediatric Emergency Medicine in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. Holding MD, MPH, and DMedSc degrees, along with fellowships FRACP, FAAP, and FACEP, he studied in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, training there as a paediatrician, emergency physician, and infectious diseases physician. Currently, he is Group Leader of Emergency Research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Director of Research at the Emergency Department of the Royal Children’s Hospital, and a practising paediatric emergency physician at the hospital. Babl co-founded and chaired the PREDICT network, the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative spanning major paediatric hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, and serves on its executive committee as well as that of the global Pediatric Emergency Research Network (PERN).

His research specializations in paediatric emergency medicine encompass multicentre clinical trials on topics including sepsis, bronchiolitis, head injuries, pneumonia severity, and analgesia. With over 350 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals such as The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and BMJ—garnering more than 12,000 citations—key works include 'A Randomized Trial of High-Flow Oxygen Therapy in Infants with Bronchiolitis' (NEJM, 2018). As Chief Investigator, he has attracted over $52 million in funding from NHMRC and MRFF grants, including a $3.8 million MRFF Rapid Applied Research Translation grant in 2024. An NHMRC Practitioner Fellow and recipient of the Melbourne Campus Clinician Scientist Fellowship, his team received the Elizabeth Molyneux Prize in 2022. Babl directs the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Paediatric Emergency Medicine, supervises PhD and MD students, mentors early career researchers, and serves as Section Editor for Emergency Medicine Australasia, profoundly impacting evidence-based paediatric emergency care globally.