Karen Luyt is a Consultant Neonatologist at the regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust and Reader in Neonatal Medicine at the University of Bristol. Her clinical and research interests include brain injury in high risk newborn infants, the development and effective national implementation of neuroprotective care bundles and the creation of a new National Child Mortality Database.

Her laboratory based research has focused on mechanisms of brain injury, excitotoxicity and regeneration in the newborn central nervous system. Her clinical research concerns neuroprotection and optimising health outcomes in preterm infants.

She leads the national PReCePT (Prevention of Cerebral Palsy in Preterm Birth) QI programme and Health Foundation funded nested RCT, which focuses on increasing the uptake of Magnesium Sulphate in preterm labour for fetal neuroprotection in every unit in England. She is chief investigator for the NIHR funded DRIFT10 follow-up study of the DRIFT RCT, investigating the school-age outcomes of DRIFT (Drainage Irrigation and Fibrinolytic Therapy) for severe intraventricular haemorrhage and post haemorrhagic hydrocephalus.

Karen was awarded the British Neuroscience Association’s “best PhD thesis of 2006” (An investigation into the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in white matter injury in the preterm brain) and is an Officer of the UK Neonatal Society and a member of the European Neonatal Brain Club.