Dr Beverley Muhlhausler
NHMRC Peter Doherty Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr Beverley Muhlhausler is an early career researcher (Thesis awarded August, 2006) who heads the Obesity and Metabolic Division of the Early Origins of Adult Health Research Group within the Sansom Institute at the University of South Australia. Dr Muhlhausler currently holds a prestigious Peter Doherty Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (“The Early Origins of Obesity, a population based and Mechanistic approach, 2007-2011 $269,000). Dr Muhlhausler has a keen interest in the mechanisms underlying the programming of obesity and in developing strategies in order to overcome or lessen the impact of early life exposures.
She has a particular interest in facilitating the transition between basic research and public health policy, using experimental paradigms which in parallel can address the associative links between prenatal and postnatal events in human populations and that address the underlying mechanisms – to inform future intervention strategies.
Dr Muhlhausler has published 12 original research papers and contributed to 6 review articles in leading international journals in her field of research (biological programming and the early origins of obesity and appetite regulation) since 2002. These publications have consistently appeared in high-impact factor journals within the field of biological science, and since 2002 she has achieved a most impressive career citation index approaching 100 citations. She has had a letter to the Editor published in Science in 2003, which has been cited at leading international conferences, and has co-authored a research book chapter.
In 2006, Dr Muhlhausler published two first-author original research papers, one in the FASEB Journal (Impact factor 6.8, one of the top journals in the biological sciences (3rd of 65)) and the other in Endocrinology (Impact Factor 5.15, in the top 10 of 89 journals in the Endocrinology Field) and contributed to two invited review papers. Dr Muhlhausler also published her first sole author paper, a Young Investigator Perspective for the Journal of Neuroendocrinology in 2007. In addition, Dr Muhlhausler has presented work at over 35 international and national scientific conferences since 2002.
Since submitting her PhD in January 2006 and joining the Sansom Institute, she has been successful in obtaining a competitive Young Investigator Grant from the Channel 7 Research Foundation (Intrauterine growth restriction and the early origins of the metabolic syndrome, 2007-2007, $18,000) and is a Chief Investigator on an NHMRC Project Grant (McMillen & Muhlhausler, The Early Origins of Obesity, 2007-2010, $320,250).