News Archive

Internationally respected researcher Dr Florian Daniel Zepf has been appointed the new Chair and Winthrop Professor in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at The University of Western Australia.

Professor Zepf, affiliated with UWA’s School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and School of Paediatrics and Child Health, will also be Clinical Director/Head of the WA Department of Specialised Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Professor Zepf has a significant track record in the field of child and adolescent mental health.

After completing his medical studies at the JW Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, he worked at the Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at RWTH Aachen University in Germany where he also worked as a consultant and child and adolescent psychiatrist.  In 2011, he briefly came to WA as a Raine Visiting Professor.

Professor Zepf has won many prestigious international awards, including the Young Minds in Psychiatry Award (awarded by the American Psychiatric Association, APA) and the Donald J Cohen Fellowship Award (awarded by the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, IACAPAP).

He is interested in topics related to child and adolescent mental health, including attention disorders such as ADHD, eating disorders, mood and bipolar disorders, conduct disorders, the impact of different neurotransmitters on mood and behaviours, autism spectrum disorders and self-harming behaviour.

He is also interested in the treatment of these disorders, in particular non-pharmacological and non-invasive treatment concepts for attention disorders like ADHD.

Professor Zepf is Editor In Chief of Translational Developmental Psychiatry ,and is on the editorial boards of many other journals.

As inaugural chair, Professor Zepf will conduct research and teach medical students as well as doctors and psychiatric trainees in addition to his clinical leadership role.

Professor Zepf said he was pleased to be part of a new focus on child and adolescent mental health at UWA.

“These are really exciting times to be a child and adolescent psychiatrist, in particular with regards to the availability of a variety of new scientific methods that were not available in earlier days,” Professor Zepf said.

“Western Australia has so many opportunities both clinically and research-wise.  It’s my goal to facilitate research in child and adolescent mental health, and to raise further interest in this important field”.

Media references

Professor Florian Daniel Zepf (UWA School of Paediatrics and Child Health)  (+61 8) 9340 8176
Jess Reid (UWA Media and PR Officer)  (+61 8) 6488 6876