Haresh Kirpalani, M.D., MMSc

I am a neonatal physician with my training from medical school to advanced fellow status in the UK; with further training at Toronto Hospital Sick Children, Canada. I am MSc qualified in Clinical Epidemiology (McMaster). For the last 8 years I have worked in the USA at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. I remain cross-appointed to the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University, where I assist the Neonatal Research group (led and co-founded by myself, and Barbara Schmidt, and Robin Roberts). I am also the Founding Director of the Infant Chronic Lung Program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University Pennsylvania.

I am committed to mentoring junior researchers and clinicians. I have been fortunate to have received several teaching and mentoring awards – the last being in 2015 – an award for Junior Faculty mentoring at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia.

I have been involved with randomized controlled trials (RCT) in either the neonatal ICU or the pediatric ICU since 1985. This involvement includes service on several data safety monitoring committees for RCTs. I am a passionate advocate of Evidence Based Medicine in neonatal trials, which I interpret as an imperative to have more high quality randomized evidence of therapies in the NICU. In accordance with this approach, I serve on the editorial founding board of an international organization “Evidence Based Neonatology” (https://ebneo.org/).

My prior RCT work was funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and I hold current NIHCHD and NHLBI funding. I was also the alternate PI to the Neonatal Research Network of the NICHD at U. Pennsylvania, of which Dr. Barbara Schmidt was the PI.

My RCT experience began in 1985, as the trial coordinator at the Hospital for Sick Children for the High Frequency Oscillation (HiFi) study. I was a steering committee member for 2 major neonatal trials of inhaled nitric oxide funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and in which the Neonatal Research Network of the NICHD took part: the Neonatal Inhaled Nitric Oxide Study (NiNOS) and the Early Inhaled Nitric Oxide Study (EiNOS) trials. I was the PI of a multi-national randomized controlled trial – funded by Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR): Nasal Intermittent Positive Pressure Ventilation trial NIPPV – comparing CPAP vs nasal IPPV non-invasive respiratory support, which enrolled 1012 infants of BW Currently I am the Contact PI of a multi-national trial on the effects of Sustained Inflation in the delivery room in preterms (Sustained Aeration of Infant Lungs (SAIL) trial: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial). This has now closed and is in the final stages of reporting. I was also the PI of the Preterms In Need of Transfusion (PINT) study, funded by the CIHR. This was the largest neonatal RCT to examine whether random allocation to two different hemoglobin thresholds affect clinically relevant neonatal outcomes in infants with birth weights