Jennifer Koplin

Group Leader, Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology, The University of Queensland
A/Prof Jennifer Koplin is Group Leader of Childhood Allergy & Epidemiology at the University of Queensland Child Health Research Centre. She leads the Evidence and Translation Hub of the National Allergy Centre of Excellence (www.nace.org.au) and the Food Allergy Prevention stream of the NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence in Food Allergy (CFAR; www.foodallergyresearch.org.au).

A/Prof Koplin has over 15 years of research experience in epidemiology and allergy, and has developed an internationally recognised program of research in the epidemiology of childhood food allergy. Her research has explored the prevalence, natural history, causes and consequences of childhood allergic disease. She has led a series of large population-based allergy cohort studies, is a co-investigator on several food allergy prevention and treatment trials and collaborates on research exploring immunological mechanisms underlying childhood food allergy and improving food allergy diagnosis. A/Prof Koplin has been awarded 6 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grants, 2 consecutive NHMRC fellowships and a Centre of Research Excellence as a chief investigator. She has authored more than 150 peer reviewed journal articles with >4,500 citations and is on the editorial board of the international Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

Her recent research focused on using population-based studies to inform the design and implementation of prevention interventions and determine their effectiveness in reducing allergy prevalence at the population level. She also has a strong research interest in the role of infant feeding in allergy prevention and contributed to the development of new Australian and international guidelines on infant feeding for preventing food allergy. In 2018, she received a National Health and Medical Research Council project grant to conduct the first study internationally to measure the impact of these guidelines on infant feeding practices and the population prevalence of peanut allergy.