Bridget Barber

Associate Professor Bridget Barber is Team Head of the Clinical Malaria group at QIMR Berghofer and an Infectious Diseases Physician at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. She completed her PhD in 2014 at Menzies School of Health Research with Professor Nicholas Anstey. For her PhD, she established a clinical research site in Sabah, Malaysia and led a large tertiary-hospital based prospective study of the epidemiology, clinical and pathophysiological features of knowlesi, falciparum and vivax malaria. Following her PhD she was awarded an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship to continue her malaria research in Malaysia.

Her outputs from her studies in Malaysia have made a major contribution to the current understanding of knowlesi malaria. This has included the first descriptions of the use of intravenous artesunate for the treatment of knowlesi malaria; the first systematic evaluations of microscopy and rapid diagnostic tests for the diagnosis of P. knowlesi; the first descriptions of knowlesi malaria in children and in pregnancy; and first detailed reports of pathogenesis of knowlesi malaria.

She has also led studies demonstrating the increase in knowlesi malaria in Sabah as the human malaria species approach elimination and has implemented a state-wide malaria surveillance study in Sabah. She was involved in randomised controlled trials in knowlesi and vivax malaria and most recently led a randomised controlled trial of paracetamol for the attenuation of acute kidney injury in knowlesi malaria. Bridget joined Professor James McCarthy’s group at QIMR Berghofer in 2018, and now leads the Clinical Malaria group in conducting malaria volunteer infection studies.