Rate My Professor Jane Harding

Distinguished Professor Dame Jane Harding is a leading neonatologist at the University of Auckland's Liggins Institute within the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. She earned her MBChB from the University of Auckland in 1978 and a DPhil in fetal physiology from the University of Oxford in 1982. After training as a paediatrician, she joined the University of Auckland's Faculty of Medicine in 1989 and was appointed Professor of Neonatology in 1997. She co-founded the Liggins Institute, serving as Deputy Director from 2003 to 2007, and held the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research from 2008 to 2015. Currently, she is the Clinical Lead for the Human Health Research Services Platform and President of Royal Society Te Apārangi since July 2024. Her career encompasses extensive teaching and supervision in perinatal science and paediatrics.

Professor Harding's research centres on fetal and newborn physiology, with a focus on neonatal glycaemia, nutrition, and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes for at-risk infants, including those born preterm or hypoglycaemic. Her team pioneered the use of oral dextrose gel to treat and prevent neonatal hypoglycaemia, influencing global clinical guidelines. She has authored over 415 publications, cited more than 20,000 times, including key works such as 'Oral dextrose gel to prevent hypoglycaemia in at-risk neonates' (Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 2023), 'Evaluation of oral dextrose gel for prevention of neonatal hypoglycaemia in babies at risk' (PLoS Med, 2021), and 'Neonatal hypoglycaemia' (BMJ Med, 2024). Her contributions have earned prestigious honours, including Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (2001), Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (2002), Health Research Council Beaven Medal (2016), Rutherford Medal (2019), Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (2020), and the Prime Minister's Science Prize (2022) with her neonatal glucose studies team. This work has transformed management practices, improving lifelong health outcomes for mothers and babies worldwide.