Rate My Professor Sanjay Ramakrishnan

Dr. Sanjay Ramakrishnan is an academic respiratory physician affiliated with Curtin University Medical School and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia Medical School. He completed his medical degree at the University of Western Australia, followed by specialty training in respiratory and sleep medicine in Western Australia. He earned his PhD at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, under Prof. Mona Bafadhel, focusing on improving care for COPD exacerbations. During this time, he also served as a Lecturer in Physiology at St Peter's College, Oxford. Ramakrishnan leads the Perth Exacerbation Research (PER) group at the Institute for Respiratory Health, University of Western Australia, and directs asthma and COPD clinics at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth.

His research centers on clinical trials in asthma and COPD, emphasizing biomarker-guided treatments for exacerbations and precision medicine. Key contributions include leading the STOIC trial, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine (2021), which demonstrated the efficacy of inhaled budesonide in early COVID-19; the STARR-2 trial in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine (2024), assessing blood eosinophil-guided oral prednisolone for COPD exacerbations; and the ABRA trial in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine (2025), evaluating benralizumab for eosinophilic exacerbations of asthma and COPD. Additional notable works feature the derivation of an asthma attack risk scale centred on blood eosinophils and exhaled nitric oxide (Thorax, 2022) and analyses of inflammatory risk factors for asthma attacks (The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2025). His publications have appeared in leading journals such as The Lancet, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, European Respiratory Journal, and Chest. Ramakrishnan holds editorial roles as COPD Associate Editor for Respirology, BMJ Open Respiratory Research, and Chest, and member of the COPD editorial boards for American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Chest. His biomarker-driven approaches for asthma and COPD attacks have been incorporated into international guidelines, delivering the first new treatment for asthma attacks in 50 years. Awards include the Bob Johnson and Jenny Llanos Clinical Research Fellowship, National Institute for Health and Care Research fellowship funding, Charlie’s Research Foundation fellowship, and recognition as a top young COPD researcher to watch by The Lancet Respiratory Medicine in 2023.