A/Prof Valerie Sung
Co-Group leader and Principal Research Fellow
A/Prof Valerie Sung is a consultant paediatrician at The Royal Children's Hospital, Co-Group leader and Principal Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. Her career vision is to provide the best care to deaf and hard of hearing children as well as families of crying infants, while conducting clinical and population-based research that can change and optimise practice. She is passionate about using ethically-sound and consumer-accepted ways to enable use of (i) routine clinical and health services data for quality improvement and research, and (ii) large-scale registries as a platform to answer important research questions and facilitate intervention trials in real time.
Her research program on child deafness has a unique health services framework that encompasses population and clinical cohorts as well as intervention trials. A/Prof Sung’s major research projects include:
- The Australian National Child Hearing Outcomes Registry (ANCHOR), in collaboration with Queensland Health, aiming to develop a national data platform to track outcomes and minimise inequities in child hearing health service access;
- The Screen cCMV Project, in collaboration with Australia’s largest birth cohort GenV (Generation Victoria), to implement timely screening of congenital CMV, a potentially reversible cause of progressive hearing loss;
- The Victorian Childhood Hearing Longitudinal Databank (VicCHILD), in collaboration with the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program (VIHSP), which has >1100 participant families since its inception in 2012;
- The Australasian Congenital Cytomegalovirus Register (ACMVR), led through Cerebral Palsy Alliance, is a national register of people with congenital CMV;
- The Melbourne Genomics Implementation project has sought to improve access and education around genomic investigation for childhood hearing loss. The aim is to have equitable access to the offer of genomic testing for every child to work toward precision therapies and interventions. A resource was developed to support clinicians in accessing genomic testing for deaf and hard of hearing children.
A/Prof Sung is founder and chair of the Childhood Hearing Australasian Medical Professionals (CHAMP) Network which developed national guidelines for managing childhood hearing loss. She is a committee member of the Australasian Newborn Hearing Screening Committee, member of the Expert Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Working Group, member of the AIHW Aboriginal Ear and Hearing Health Advisory Group, editorial panel member of BMC Pediatrics and past editorial panel member of the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health and Frontiers in Pediatrics. She was past member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Paediatric Research Committee, the MCRI Community and Clinical Research Advisory Committee, Steering Committee Member of the Children's Healthcare Australasia development of the CHA Paediatric Patient Reported Experience Measure, and the Australasian Paediatric Research Network Steering Committee.
A/Prof Sung's current clinical work is primarily through the Unsettled babies and Caring for Hearing in Children (CHIC) clinics.
Affiliations
- Co-Group leader, Prevention Innovation, Population Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, 2025 - present
- Team Leader, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, 2021 – 2025
- NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (EL2), 2025-2029
- Clinician Scientist Fellow, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, 2021 – 2024
- Honorary Clinical Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, Department of Paediatrics, 2020 – present
Awards
- 2024 NHMRC Investigator Grant Emerging Leadership 2 (EL2) (GNT2033683) 2025-2029
Population approaches for prevention, diagnosis and management of childhood deafness - 2021 NHMRC Hearing Health Evidence Based Support Services Grant (GNT2015735) 2022-2025. Building on newborn hearing screening success: towards national standards and data management. CIA Sung V, CIs: Beswick R, Kong K, Wake M, Leigh G, Ching T, Kluk K, Parkinson B, King A, Shepherd D
- 2020 NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies (GNT2006491) 2021-2025. Whole-of-population CRISPR point-of-care testing for congenital cytomegalovirus to prevent hearing and neurodevelopment disabilities through a public health approach. CIA Sung V, CIs Wake M, Pellegrini M, Jones C, Hua XY, Moreno-Betancur M, Leventer R, Saffery R, Hui L
- L’Oréal-UNESCO Australian & New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship, 2019
- Garnett Passe and Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation Conjoint Grant 2018
- Deafness Foundation Award 2018
- The Royal Australasian College of Physicians Foundation Cottrell Research Establishment Fellowship 2017
- The Dean’s Award for Excellence in a PhD Thesis, 2016
- Rue Wright Award, The International Congress of Pediatrics, 2013
- Equity Trustees Charitable Trusts, Georgina Menzies Maconachie Charitable Trust 2011
Contact
Email: [email protected]
