Michael Reade

Professor Reade is Director of the Greater Brisbane Clinical School and Professor of Military Medicine and Surgery at UQ. The Greater Brisbane Clinical School comprises all the Brisbane teaching hospitals of the University of Queensland along with the preclinical teaching resources of the St Lucia campus and the General Practice Clinical Unit. A specialist intensive care physician, anaesthetist and clinician-researcher, he also leads a program of research relevant to military trauma medicine and surgery that holds equal promise for severely injured civilian trauma patients.

After clinical training in anaesthetics and intensive care medicine in Sydney, Melbourne, Oxford and Pittsburgh, a doctorate in the molecular pathogenesis of nitric oxide production in human septic shock from the University of Oxford and a postdoctoral research fellowship in clinical trials and epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh, Michael returned to Australia as Associate Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the Austin Hospital & the University of Melbourne in 2007. Michael held faculty appointments at the University of Oxford (where he taught physiology), the University of Pittsburgh (where he was an Instructor in critical care), and currently holds adjunct or honorary appointments at the University of London, the US Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the University of Melbourne and Monash University. He has supervised postgraduate students in basic, applied and clinical research, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy of the United Kingdom.

In parallel with his academic and clinical work, Michael served in the Australian Army Reserve until his appointment to the full-time ADF Chair in 2011. He was commissioned as a General Service Officer in the Australian Army in 1990, and prior to his appointment to UQ had deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo (on attachment to the British Airborne Brigade), Timor, the Solomon Islands and Afghanistan. In 2013 he commanded the Australian Specialist Health Group at the NATO ISAF Role 3 Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and in 2015 in Iraq he was the first Director of Clinical Services of the ADF hospital deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. He deployed again to Iraq in 2016 and 2017. From 2015-2018 he was the Director of Clinical Services of the Australian Regular Army's only field hospital. In 2017 he led this unit to become the first ever ADF hospital accredited by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Trauma Verification Program. He was recognised for this service by appointment as a Member in the Military Division of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours List. From 2019-2022 on promotion to Brigadier he was appointed Director General Health Reserve - Army, responsible for technical regulation of specialist medical, nursing and allied health support. He remains a senior clinical advisor to Joint Health Command of the Australian Defence Force.

Professor Reade's clinical research focusses on treatments for exsanguinating haemorrhage, improving trauma systems, and preventing and treating acute cognitive impairment (such as that which results from traumatic brain injury). He is the Chief Investigator in an NHMRC-funded clinical trial of cyropreserved (frozen) platelets, a technology which holds equal promise to military and civilian trauma patients, particularly those in smaller hospitals. He is also a Chief Investigator in NHMRC-funded multicentre clinical trials of tranexamic acid and fibrinogen concentrate (drugs thought to reduce mortality from traumatic bleeding), the effect of erythropoietin on inflammation and mortality after severe trauma, a novel anti-delirium strategy for use in critically ill patients, and an advanced MRI/biomarker study in traumatic brain injury. He has active research collaborations with Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, the National Trauma Research Institute, the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre at Monash University, the ANZICS Clinical Trials Group and the ANZCA Clinical Trials Network.

Professor Reade is also developing a research programme focussed on trauma systems design, in collaboration with colleagues at the Jamieson Trauma Institute on the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital campus, Australian state ambulance services and the US and UK armed forces, aiming (for example) to optimise the allocation of prehospital and hospital resources in the management of life-threatening trauma.

Professor Reade currently supervises 10 postgraduate students (including 4 PhD students) and one postdoctoral research fellow, most of whom are Defence Force officers. He holds or has held research grants totalling >A$51M, has published >230 peer-reviewed papers and delivered >440 lectures at national and international conferences. From 2019-2021, Professor Reade was President of the Australasian Trauma Society.