Nadia Badawi

Nadia Badawi AM is a medical researcher and an expert on newborn encephalopathy and cerebral palsy. She is the Chair of Cerebral Palsy at the University of Sydney.

Life

Badawi grew up in Egypt and trained in paediatrics and neonatology there. She later moved to Dublin, Ireland, and arrived in Australia in 1992 to work with Fiona Stanley at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth. Enrolling at the University of Western Australia, and with Stanley as her supervisor, Badawi worked on a research project for her Ph.D, completing it in 1998. The research, into newborn encephalopathy, remains unique in the world. A publication by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics described her work as the "best available evidence" on neonatal encephalopathy.

In 1997 Badawi moved to Sydney and took up the position of head of the Grace Centre for Newborn Care at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children.

In 2009 Cerebral Palsy Alliance appointed Badawi as Australia’s first Chair of Cerebral Palsy, at the University of Notre Dame Australia, to supervise projects funded by the Research Foundation of Cerebral Palsy Alliance. In 2015 the position moved to the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney.

In 2015 Badawi co-established the International Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation in the USA. She is a significant contributor to the Australian Cerebral Palsy Register Group, a national register held by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute.

Recognition

In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours, Badawi was appointed to the Order of Australia for her service to paediatrics and neo-natal intensive care medicine as a clinician and researcher, and for her promotion of research into cerebral palsy.