Dr Fiona Brownfoot is a clinician scientist at The University of Melbourne and obstetrician at the Mercy Hospital for Women. She has had a long-standing interest in developing novel therapeutics for preeclampsia and has translated metformin and sulfasalazine from laboratory assay through to clinical trial. More recently she has developed an interest in novel biomedical engineering technologies to reduce the most devastating pregnancy complications of stillbirth and cerebral palsy. She heads a multidisciplinary team of physicists, chemists, materials engineers and software engineers. Together they are utilizing novel fibre optic technology, flexible electrical hardware and artificial intelligence to develop innovative devices to detect fetal distress during pregnancy and labour.