Rate My Professor Joerg Mattes

Professor Joerg Mattes is a Conjoint Professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health, Immunology and Microbiology, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He holds a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Hamburg, Germany (1999), Doctor Habilitatus in Paediatrics from the University of Freiburg, Germany (2005), and is a qualified Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Medicine physician (FRACP). His training included residency at University Children's Hospital Freiburg from 1996 to 2005 and a Research Fellowship at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University (1999-2001). Appointed Chair and Discipline Lead of Paediatrics and Child Health in March 2011, he serves as Senior Staff Specialist in Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at John Hunter Children's Hospital, Head of the Experimental and Translational Respiratory Medicine group, and Clinical Director of the Paediatric Lung Function Service. Mattes coordinates the Year 4 Women, Children, and Adolescent Health course in the Joint Medical Program and has supervised 14 completed PhD theses with one ongoing.

Mattes' research specializes in the pathogenesis of asthma, allergies, and respiratory infections, focusing on asthma management during pregnancy, infant lung function and wheeze, bronchiolitis, eosinophilic oesophagitis, and early-life origins of respiratory disease. He established the NSW Children and Infants Lung Function Centre (NICE) and employs mouse models of allergic airways disease and rhinovirus infection, microRNA profiling, TRAIL signaling studies, and techniques like raised-volume rapid thoracoabdominal compression and FeNO measurement. With 231 publications cited over 8,200 times, notable works include 'Prenatal origins of bronchiolitis: protective effect of optimised asthma management during pregnancy' (Thorax, 2014), 'Examination of the neonate: a suggested method' in Talley and O'Connor's Clinical Examination (2021), and recent articles such as 'Early Gestational Wildfire-Related PM2.5 Exposure Is Associated with Lung Function in Offspring of Mothers with Asthma' (2026) and 'Markers in Infants of Mothers With Asthma and Associations With Respiratory Outcomes' (2026). He has secured $14,792,514 in funding across 64 grants, including an NHMRC Health Professional Research Fellowship (2007-2011), received prizes at scientific meetings, edits the Asthma & Allergic Disorders section of BMC Pulmonary Medicine, and convenes the Asthma Special Interest Group of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.