Introduction: Celebrating Emeritus Scientia Professor Eugenie R Lumbers AM and Professor Caroline McMillen

The late Professor David Barker introduced the concept of fetal programming in the 1980s based on his studies of birth weight and death from cardiovascular disease in adult life in the UK. The mechanisms underlying the link between growth in utero and health in adult life have been less clear. Two outstanding Australian fetal physiologists, Eugenie Lumbers and Caroline McMillen, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the mechanistic links between growth as a fetus and health in adult life. These contributions were celebrated at the Australian Early Origins of Hypertension Workshop, a satellite to the International Society for Hypertension meeting, in September 2012. Forty international and national experts presented and has been collected in this ‘Frontiers in Science’ section and a Themed Issue in the Journal of the Developmental Origins of Health and Adult Disease. Professor Eugenie Lumbers graduated with an MBBS from the University of Adelaide and was subsequently awarded a Doctorate in Medicine. She was the first woman to be awarded a CJ Martin Fellowship by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) and studied fetal physiology at the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in Oxford. She established her own laboratory at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1974 and has been funded over the years by the Australian Research Council (ARC), NHMRC (1975 onwards), Australian Kidney Foundation and National Heart Foundation. In 1993, Professor Lumbers served on the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology. In 1992, she was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. In 1999, Professor Lumbers became one of UNSW’s inaugural Scientia Professors and the first female Scientia Professor at UNSW. In 2002, she was elected to the Australian Academy of Science and received the Centenary Medal of Federation. In 2010, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW. In 2012, she was awarded an Order of Australia. Professor Lumbers’ research has been broad based, including both cardiovascular and fluid and electrolyte physiology in adult non-pregnant and pregnant animals, in the fetus and in the newborn. She has been particularly interested in the role and actions of the renin–angiotensin system (RAS) and has performed human and animal experiments. She discovered inactive renin (prorenin) and showed that it was activated by proteases with Brian Morris. Most of her work relates to the development of the cardiovascular system and kidney, including the development of neural control of the circulation and programming. She has also worked in fetal gene therapy. Professor Lumbers’ current research interests relate to the role(s) of the RAS in human placentation and in pregnancy-associated hypertension. In addition, she is studying the fetal origins of human renal disease and the causes of low systemic blood flow in the preterm neonate. She is also studying the potential therapeutic use of drugs that affect the activity of the RAS in the treatment of endometrial cancer. Professor McMillen graduated with a BA(Hons) and Doctor of Philosophy at Oxford University before completing her medical degree at the University of Cambridge. She moved to Australia to take up a lectureship at Monash University and was appointed as Chair and Head of Physiology at the University of Adelaide in 1992. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Science and as Director of the Research Centre for the Early Origins of Adult Disease at the University of Adelaide. In 2005, she was appointed as Pro/Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia. She was appointed Vice Chancellor at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales in late 2011. Her research has been supported continuously by the ARC and NHMRC for over 20 years. She was ranked in the top 1% of all Web of Science authors for the past decade in the subject area of Biology and Biochemistry. Professor McMillen has published a number of seminal papers on the development of neuroendocrine control of cortisol in the developing fetus, dissecting the impact of fetal growth restriction on the developmental capacity of the cells in the pituitary that are responsible for the stimulation of cortisol synthesis and Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology (2013) 40, 740–742