Research Fellow

The Ritchie Centre, Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University.

The focus of Dr Walter's research is paediatric sleep medicine. Since 2008, when Dr Walter completed her PhD, she has held a post-doctoral position in the Paediatric Sleep group of The Ritchie Centre. Dr Walter has co-ordinated recruitment of participants and, conducted sleep studies and data analysis for 4 NHMRC projects. She has further developed her research area by extending her research to include sleep in children with cancer.

Dr Walter has 48 peer review manuscripts (44 original research papers; four reviews) and one book chapter, of which she is either first or co-senior author on 31. Her research has been cited 645 times (Scopus).

Dr Walter's research findings have been directly translated into clinical practise and have significantly contributed to the knowledge that sleep disordered breathing, particularly snoring in childhood is not benign.She has developed expertise in novel assessments of cardiovascular control and has used these in her studies investigating effects of sleep disordered breathing, which affects up to 35% of children on sleep, respiratory function, and autonomic control, in primary- and preschool-aged children. In studies that investigated the effect of treatment on preschool-aged children, and a study that is currently investigating cerebral oxygenation in children with sleep disordered breathing, she has developed expertise in the assessment of all aspects of sleep physiology, polysomnographic data and cardiovascular control. As a member of the research team which identified that primary school-aged children with all severities of sleep disordered breathing have elevated blood pressure and those with the more severe obstructive sleep apnoea have dysfunctional autonomic control of their blood pressure and heart rate, both of which can be mitigated following an improvement in the severity of the condition, Dr Walter has helped to inform clinical practice through increased awareness of the need for and benefits of intervention.