Charles is an academic neonatologist. He is Professor and Chair of Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine at the University of Bristol, and holds an Honorary Consultant Neonatologist post at Southmead Hospital, North Bristol NHS Trust.

Charles also has a significant national role as Clinical Consultant Advisor to the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit - Clinical Trials Unit, at Oxford Population Health. He is also Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford.

Charles leads and supports large-scale clinical trials that sit at the fascinating cross-section of perinatology and neonatology — answering the kinds of questions that make a real difference to babies and their families.

He trained in Paediatrics at the Charité University Medical Centre in Berlin, Germany, and the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, UK. After earning his research and teaching degree — the German Habilitation — Charles spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher and clinician in Melbourne, Australia, working alongside Professors Stuart Hooper and Peter Davis, at The Ritchie Institute, Monash Universtiy and The Royal Women's Hospital, respectively.

Charles’s research focusses on the cardio-respiratory adaptation from fetal to neonatal life, and how best to support newly born infants. His passion for clinically relevant research has made a global impact.

To date (March 2026), Charles has:

• Supervised more than 10 MD and 3 PhD theses,
• Published over 270 peer-reviewed papers,
• Been cited more than 36,500 times,
• And has an h-index of 58 — a strong indicator of both his productivity and influence in his field.

Charles is also a prominent voice in international guideline development. He is a member of the ILCOR Neonatal Task Force and Guideline Writing Group, helping shape the international standards in newborn resuscitation. Additionally, Charles is the immediate past Scientific Co-Chair for the European Resuscitation Council, and co-author of the widely adopted European Consensus Guideline on the Management of Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Newborns.

Charles recently completed his term as President of the European Society for Paediatric Research — Europe’s largest paediatric research network — a role he held from 2016 to 2023. He now is chairman of the European Board of Neonatal and Childhood Research (EBNCHR) and continues to lead on the updates for the European Training Syllabus for Neonatology. 

Beyond his academic and clinical work, Charles is a passionate advocate for collaborative research and parental involvement in neonatal care. He is a Scientific Advisor to the Glaobal Foundation for the Care of Newborn Infants, also known as GFCNI.

And on a lighter note — you can find him on Bluesky under @ccroehr.bsky.social, and his favourite hashtag is fittingly: #developingandapplyingresearch.