Professor Danny Eckert

Director, FHMRI Sleep Health

Matthew Flinders Professor, College of Medicine and Public Health

Professor Eckert is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Leadership Fellow and a Mathew Flinders Professor at Flinders University. He serves as Director of FHMRI Sleep Health and was the inaugural Deputy Director and Clinical Translation Theme Lead at Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI). 

Professor Eckert leads a comprehensive basic sciences and translational research program that focuses on identification of the causes of sleep apnea, optimisation of existing therapies, and development of new tailored therapies. He is most well-known for his pioneering respiratory phenotyping work which has led to a new precision medicine therapeutic framework to understand and treat OSA and for his research on the role of arousal mechanisms on sleep apnea pathogenesis and novel pharmacotherapy. He has published more than 170 articles in the leading sleep and respiratory medicine and other cross-disciplinary and general medical journals. 

His previous appointments include Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia where he maintains affiliate appointments, and Assistant Professor within the Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Professor Robert Adams

 MBBS, FRACP, FRCP (London), MD

 Medical Director, FHMRI Sleep Health

Professor Robert Adams is a specialist respiratory and general physician with extensive experience in public health, clinical epidemiology and health services research. He completed post-doctoral training at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School and is currently appointed as Professor in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University.

Professor Adams has extensive experience with large population-based cohort studies. He is Principal Investigator of The North West Adelaide Health Study (NWAHS) and co-led the process of harmonisation with the Florey Adelaide Male Ageing Study (FAMAS), such that there are now over 2000 men aged over 35 being followed in the Male Androgen, Inflammation, Lifestyle, Environment and Stress (MAILES) study with a further 2000 women in the cohort. He was responsible for the conduct of sleep studies in almost 850 men in the MAILES cohort, one of the largest studies worldwide of sleep health in the community.

He has authored more than 285 peer-reviewed publications in journals and books, including top ranked journals in clinical endocrinology (Diabetes Care), allergy (Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology), sleep (Sleep), respiratory medicine (Lancet Respiratory Medicine; American Journal of Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine), and general medicine (Lancet).