Kristen Gibbons

Professor Kristen Gibbons is Group Lead of the Children’s Intensive Care Research Program at the Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland, Co-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Paediatric Study Group (ANZICS PSG).

Professor Gibbons holds qualifications in mathematics, information technology, biostatistics, and research communication, and completed her PhD in Biostatistics at UQ. Her career has been dedicated to transforming outcomes for critically ill children through the design and delivery of large-scale international clinical trials and the development of innovative digital platforms to support high-quality research.

She has been instrumental in leading landmark studies, including the NITRIC trial, the largest trial ever undertaken in paediatric congenital heart disease surgery. This trial demonstrated no benefit of using nitric oxide during cardiopulmonary bypass, changing clinical practice internationally and influencing guidance from the American Academy of Paediatrics. Alongside this, Professor Gibbons has pioneered a comprehensive clinical trials digital platform now used across more than 20 projects and 10,000 patient records worldwide.

Professor Gibbons’ research spans clinical trial methodologies, epidemiology, machine learning, prediction modelling, and bioethics, with a strong commitment to improving consent practices in paediatric and adult intensive care research. Her leadership has attracted over $22 million in competitive grant funding, including major NHMRC and MRFF awards, and her contributions have been recognised with the UQ Faculty of Medicine Leader of the Future Award (2023) and the Child Health Research Centre Collaborator of the Year Award (2024).

She is also deeply invested in training and mentoring the next generation of clinician-researchers and data scientists, supervising PhD, Masters, and biostatistics students.