Professor Shehabi, a senior clinician academic and experienced clinical trialist with extensive track record in leading multinational large scale RCTs, competitive NHMRC and industry collaborative grant funding, knowledge dissemination through publications in high impact journals and presentations at major critical care meetings. He is a respected opinion leader in critical care, nationally and internationally.

Since 2015, he has published and been involved in more than 45 (13 first author) peer reviewed original research, invited editorials and book chapters with 4300 citations with h-index 26 and i10-index 41 (total 48).  Dr Shehabi has been an NHMRC GRP member in 2014/15/16/17/19 and 2020. He is a peer reviewer for many high impact journals including NEJM, JAMA, Am J Resp Crit Care Medicine, Crit Care Med and Inten Care Medicine.

Professor Shehabi led the Sedation Practice in Intensive Care Evaluation (SPICE) research programme from concept, design, execution, and publications. In collaboration with the Australian and Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials Group (ANZIC CTG), multiple SPICE studies have been conducted and published in leading critical care journals. SPICE I, the foundation of the SPICE program, conducted in 4 countries in 43 ICUs. It uncovered for the first time an independent association between deep sedation in the first 48 hrs of mechanical ventilation and 6 months mortality. SPICE II, a pilot trial conducted in 8 ICUs, tested a new concept of early goal directed sedation using dexmedetomidine as a candidate intervention. SPICE III, a pivotal trial of 4000 patients recruited in 74 ICUs tested the hypothesis that early sedation with dexmedetomidine may reverse early deep sedation and reduce mortality. SPICE IV is the next succession of the SPICE program in older population of ICU patients.

In collaboration with Canadian Critical Care Trials Group, Dr Shehabi assembled a team of investigators in Australia to conduct the BALANCE trial, Bacteraemia Antibiotic Length Actually Needed for Clinical Effectiveness. In collaboration with Infectious disease consultants at MU, a successful NHMRC grant was secured for the completion of the trial.

He has been the chief investigator of the randomised multicentre RCT, the ProGUARD trial, funded by the Intensive Care Foundation, in 12 ICUs in Australia, evaluating the utility of Procalcitonin in patients with undifferentiated infections in ICU. The results of which were published in the AJRCCM in 2012. Since then, he collaborated widely with international colleagues and participated in multiple publications in the Lancet Inf Dis and the Cochrane reviews on the utility of Procalcitonin in managing respiratory infections.

Through his research, Professor Shehabi is considered a national and an international authority on sedation and delirium management and on the use of dexmedetomidine in critical care and perioperative medicine. He actively participated in the Society Critical Care Medicine taskforce which composed and published the widely disseminated PADIS guidelines, published in Crit Care Med in 2018. He is part of an international delirium interest group evaluating the prevention and impact delirium in hospital and ICU patients. He has led the SaferCare Victoria sedation and delirium management plan, known as the Vic-PAD ICU. The first stage was conducted in 13 ICUs in Victoria prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Shehabi secured over $20M funding for the SPICE program and obtained industry (Pfizer and Orion Pharma), NHMRC CIA, NZ Health Research Council, Malaysian Heart Foundation, UK NIHR portfolio funding for the SPICE-III, and NHMRC, Canadian Institute of Health Research, German Council funding and UK NIHR portfolio funding for SPICE-IV. He played leading role in securing over $25M outside the SPICE program in ANZ, Canada, USA, and Europe.