Topun Austin is a Consultant Neonatologist and Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Professor of Neurophotonics at University College London.
He is the director of NeoLAB, based in the Evelyn Perinatal Imaging Centre at the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge. He has a broad range of interests in neonatal neuroscience from cerebrovascular physiology to sleep, consciousness and cognition in the developing brain. He has a longstanding collaboration with the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at University College London and together have pioneered a number of new optical technologies to monitor and image the newborn brain.
He has a number of active collaborations internationally, including with Physics for Medicine in Paris where in conjunction with UCL his lab is developing a whole brain functional imaging system using optical and functional ultrasound to investigate the development higher cognitive function in preterm infants, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where he is collaborating on studies investigating mother-infant neural synchrony, early infant development and improving cognitive flexibility in early life as part of the Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition (https://www.cares.cam.ac.uk/research/clic/)
Professor Austin is a collaborator on a number of studies with the Autism Research Centre, including the Cambridge Human Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study which imaged the brain from fetal life to early infancy in high risk individuals, the Cambridge Ultrasound Siblings and Parents (CUSP) Study using ultrasound during these pregnancies to chart growth of the infant prenatally and more recently a study focused on investigating sex differences in newborn brain structure and cognition, along with how these early sex differences shape future developmental outcomes.