Bobbi Fleiss

Associate Professor Bobbi Fleiss is a developmental neurobiologist and Head of the Perinatal Brain Injury Lab at RMIT University. She studies injury to the newborn brain caused by preterm birth, lack of oxygen at birth and stroke around the time of birth. These injuries are a leading cause of cerebral palsy and lifelong learning and behavioural difficulties.

Her research focuses on microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells. She has shown that the stage of brain development changes how microglia respond to injury, and that early injury can reprogram them into a long-lasting inflammatory state that blocks recovery. Her team now asks whether resolving this inflammation can restore normal brain development. She also develops and tests treatments, including cell therapies and an implantable regenerative hydrogel for neonatal stroke, using rat, mouse, spiny mouse, sheep and piglet models and human tissue.

Bobbi completed her PhD at Monash University and trained at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), King’s College London (UK) and NeuroDiderot (Inserm/Université Paris Cité, France), where she retains an affiliation. She is the Medical Science HDR Manager in RMIT’s School of Health and Biomedical Sciences and holds an editorial role at Pediatric Research.