Professor Franz Babl is the Group Leader of Emergency Research at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Professor of Paediatric Emergency Medicine at the University of Melbourne. He works as a paediatric emergency physician at The Royal Children's Hospital. He studied in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and trained in the USA as a paediatrician, emergency physician and infectious diseases physician.

He was the co-founder and founding chair of the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT) network in Australia and New Zealand, and a current member of the executive committee. This network involves all major tertiary paediatric hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, with an annual census of half a million paediatric presentations. This collaboration is uniquely placed to conduct multicentre trials.

Professor Babl has conducted many collaborative studies with the PREDICT network. He is currently a mentor and supervisor to advanced trainees, PhD students and early career researchers at the Royal Children's Hospital and within PREDICT. He has published >350 peer reviewed publications including in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and BMJ. He is Chief Investigator on a number of National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Futures Fund funded studies. Total grant funding over his career is >$52 million. He is the director of an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Paediatric Emergency Medicine.