Optimal Nutrition Therapy During & Post-ICU

Emma Ridley, PhD, MPH, BNutDietet, APD

Nutrition Program Lead & Emerging Leadership Fellow (2020-2024) 
Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre 
Senior ICU Dietitian, The Alfred 
Melbourne, Australia

With extensive experience in acute and subacute clinical dietetics, mainly in intensive care, Dr Emma Ridley aims to improve the understanding and use of nutrition in intensive care and to address gaps between evidence and practice in critical care nutrition. In her role as a senior research fellow and the NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, she has been focusing on research in energy requirements during hospitalization, the clinical application of indirect calorimetry, and the effect of optimal nutrition delivery on short- and long-term outcomes for patients in intensive care units. She also has been responsible for the strategic development and leadership of the Critical Care Nutrition Program at the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre. Dr Ridley continues to practice as a clinical dietitian in the intensive care unit at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, where she has worked for 15 years. Her leadership and research have been recognized through a 5-year Early Career Faculty award from the European Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition; nationally, Dr Ridley was a finalist for the 2019 Dietitian of the Year through the Australian Allied Health Awards, and at the state level, she was a finalist for a Victorian Premier’s Award for Health and Medical Research in 2019. Within Monash University she was awarded a Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences Advancing Women’s Success Grant and an Early Career Publication Prize. Dr Ridley was recently appointed as an editor for Australian Critical Care and as an associate editor for Clinical Nutrition ESPEN. She is the inaugural chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Novice Investigator Group.