Associate Professor Max Berry has dedicated her research and career to safeguarding babies’ brains. As a Neonatal Intensive Care specialist, she has asked herself daily how she can safeguard the neurodevelopmental potential and wellbeing of babies throughout New Zealand. In 2018, Dr Berry received a project grant from the Neurological Foundation to investigate a very special therapy called, neurosteroid analogue therapy to prevent the many behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders concerned with premature birth. This event will focus on what has already been discovered and what Dr Berry and her team are working towards for future therapies for premature babies.

Associate Professor Max Berry obtained her Bachelor of Science in Developmental Neurobiology from the University of London prior to completion of undergraduate medical training at Guys and St Thomas’s Hospitals, London. She obtained a Membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Heath in the UK just before emigrating to New Zealand, where she completed her training in neonatal and perinatal medicine in Hamilton and Wellington. In 2008 Dr Berry was awarded an HRC (Health Research Council) Fellowship for PhD studies. Dr Berry received a project grant from the Neurological Foundation in 2018 to investigate behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents born preterm.