Emeritus Professor Eugenie Lumbers retired from UNSW in 2003 and did not resume research until 2007. she was awarded an NHMRC Project Grant in 2008 at the University of Newcastle, where she established a new research effort into the role of the renin-angiotensin system in human reproduction.

Professor Lumbers has held significant national and international profiles since she discovered the molecule ‘prorenin’(the inactive form of renin). She has made significant discoveries in adult and fetal cardiovascular physiology, on inhibition of the vagal component of the cardiac baroreflex by angiotensin, the fetal cardiovascular effects of cortisol and in my work in fetal cardiovascular physiology and renal function (with particular reference to the renin-angiotensin system). She has also extensively studied fetal programming i.e., the impact of maternal renal dysfunction on fetal renal development. In addition, since 2008, she have played a pivotal role, with Associate Professor Kirsty Pringle, in the establishment of a new research program focussed on understanding the role of the intrauterine renin-angiotensin system in pregnancy and women’s health.

Since the beginning of her research career (1971) Professor Lumbers has published over 270 publications. Her national and international collaborations in fetal neonatal and maternal physiology in pregnancy has led to an extensive knowledge of maternal and fetal physiology in humans, sheep, pigs, rabbits and marsupials. She has considerable expertise in the role of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in pregnancy ranging from her early publications on the presence of the RAS in the human conceptus to its identification in the wallaby reproductive tract.
Professor Lumbers has written 15 book chapters and 18 reviews on this topic, the RAS and on renal and cardiac physiology, and since her return to part-time return to research in 2007, Ihas secured over $6.8 million dollars of research funding and over 70 research outputs.