Dr. Adre du Plessis has focused his clinical and research interest exclusively on the immature brain, understanding its normal development, as well as the causes and consequences of abnormal brain development.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. du Plessis received his medical degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and completed his residency at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. He trained under the ‘father’ of neonatal neurology, Dr. Joseph Volpe, first at St. Louis Children’s and then at Boston Children’s Hospital.  Dr. du Plessis developed the Neonatal Neurology Program as well as the Neurocardiology Program at Boston Children’s and Harvard’s Longwood medical centers, both first in their field anywhere. Since 2010, he has been director of the Prenatal Pediatrics Institute at Children’s National in Washington, DC. He has a longstanding track record of mentoring in the field and is currently Co-Pi with Catherine Limperopoulos, PhD, on a T32 Training Grant (NICHD 1T32HD098066).  Over the past 25 years he has led a team that has developed multimodal neuromonitoring devices that allow an unprecedented depth of continuous bedside inquiry into both the systemic support systems, as well as autoregulatory systems intrinsic to the brain. This approach has allowed unique insights into the immature brain’s responses to critical illness, and has provided an invaluable framework for the training of young clinical investigators into the complex pathophysiology of the immature human brain.

Professional Outline

Professor Gordon Dutton is a Pediatric Ophthalmologist who worked for over 20 years at the Royal Hospital for Sick Chidren in Glasgow. He is now Emeritus Professor of Visual Science at Glasgow Caledonian University. His special interests include medical education, ocular motility, and cerebral visual impairment (CVI) in both children and adults.

Professor Dutton has lectured as a Keynote Speaker on a range of ophthalmic topics in relation to pediatric ophthalmology, both nationally and internationally. He has contributed to over 200 refereed publications, and to four textbooks concerning cerebral visual impairment in children, as well as to two information websites for teachers and parents, namely ‘The CVI Society’ and ‘CVI Scotland’.

Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., is the founding Director of the Developing Brain Institute and Director of the Advanced Pediatric Brain Imaging Research Program at Children’s National Hospital and Professor of Neurology, Radiology and Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. The Developing Brain Institute has assembled leading scientists and health care providers from across myriad disciplines and health care models (tertiary care to primary care) that are at the forefront of clinical research and translational efforts focused on accelerating screening, diagnosing, treating and preventing prenatal onset brain disorders to improve child health and well-being for life. Dr. Limperopoulos’ research seeks to understand the impact of an adverse intra- and extra-uterine environment on the developing fetal brain and its long-term neurodevelopmental repercussions. She is an occupational therapist and pediatric neuroscientist who has demonstrated repeated successes in completing novel patient-centered clinical and translational research in healthy and high-risk pregnant women and neurodiagnostic and neurodevelopmental surveillance in high-risk fetuses and preterm infants. She has or has had funding from the National Institutes of Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private foundations, like the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. She also leads the Integrating Special Populations Module of the CNMC-GW NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award, which focuses on improving recruitment and retention of disadvantaged women into preventative maternal-fetal clinical trials aimed at optimizing long-term, maternal-infant health and well-being. She co-leads the DC Mother Baby Wellness Network, funded by a June 2020 investment from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. The Network is a city-wide effort to create new interventions to reduce mental health issues commonly experienced by pregnant, low-income Black women.

Warren Marks, MD is a pediatric neurologist at Cook Children’s Medical center in Fort Worth where he serves as the director of the movement disorders program and the motion analysis lab. 

After completing his pediatrics, neurology and child neurology at the University of Oklahoma, he returned home to Fort Worth where he began his work by taking over the MDA clinic and spearheading the development of the inpatient rehabilitation program at Cook Children’s which opened in 1990.  From the rehabilitation program grew an interest in spasticity and movement disorders, and in particular the application of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in children.  In 2007, our deep brain stimulation team performed the first of nearly 150 DBS surgeries.  The team has expanded, and we are now involved with our new translational research team looking for new ways to improve patient selection and outcomes.  He is one of the founding members of PEDiDBS, the international registry of pediatric patients undergoing DBS surgery.  He was awarded the Cook Children’s Health Foundation Endowed Chair in Neurosciences to further his work in cerebral palsy and movement disorders.  He has also served as the director of neurorehabilitation and the Muscular Dystrophy Clinical Care Center at Cook Children.

Professor Iona Novak is the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Chair of Allied Health at The University of Sydney, Australia. Iona is a Fulbright Scholar. Her research aims to discover, test and translate new treatments, in priority areas identified by people with cerebral palsy.

Dr. Zwaigenbaum is a developmental pediatrician and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta and holds the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation Chair in Autism. He has been the lead investigator for the past 20 years on a program of research aimed at informing early detection and diagnosis of ASD, following a large cohort of at-risk infants (younger siblings of children with ASD). He has also held leadership roles in this field of study (e.g., chair of the international Baby Siblings Research Consortium) and published comprehensive reviews to help inform clinical practice. In his clinical role as medical lead of the Autism Clinic at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Program, he has co-led community pediatric training on ASD diagnois, and helped establish a specialty adult ASD diagnostic service.