M. P. Ward Platt

Dr Martin Ward Platt is a paediatrician working in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and his day job is looking after newborn babies in special care and intensive care. He also offers a service for chronic pain management, which mostly involves teenage children, so professionally he is an unlikely hybrid: a neonatologist with an interest in adolescence.

In his spare time Martin is an Associate Editor of the journal 'Archives of Disease in Childhood' (http://adc.bmj.com/), with responsibility for the Fetal & Neonatal edition. He has an honorary academic appointment with Newcastle University (Honorary Clinical Reader in Neonatal and Paediatric Medicine), and he is Clinical Director of the Regional Maternity Survey Office (www.rmso.org.uk).

Martin writes for both a non-professional audience (for example 'The Wonder Years', a book about children in their pre-school years written for parents), and for professional and academic audiences (for example, 'Injury in the Young'). He has published many research papers in the medical literature, covering his interests in developmental physiology, neonatal epidemiology, congenital anomaly, pain in children, and Cot Death, amongst others.