Introduction - Victorian College of Pharmacy

The Victorian College of Pharmacy (a faculty of Monash University) has a proud record of education and research in the pharmaceutical sciences. It is one of Australia's leading schools of pharmacy, offering postgraduate coursework, professional qualifications and further education for the pharmacy profession, undergraduate , honours programs and research higher degrees in pharmacy and pharmaceutical science,

The Victorian College of Pharmacy is located at the Parkville campus, in close proximity to other leading research organisations in the `Parkville strip'. It shares its premises with the Pharmacy Board of Victoria and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (Victorian Branch) Ltd, and has strong links with the national and international pharmaceutical industries and health research communities.

There are four departments within the college: Pharmaceutics, Pharmacy Practice, Medicinal Chemistry, and Pharmaceutical Biology. All departments are headed by internationally recognised research professors.

Research profile

Leading-edge research is conducted within and collaboratively between the college's four departments. The Victorian College of Pharmacy enjoys close links with researchers in other faculties of the university - notably the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and the Faculty of Science - as well as other Australian and international universities, and the national and international pharmaceutical industry and profession. The college's research output is also sustained and strengthened by its longstanding commitment to postgraduate training.

The college benchmarks its research effort against the best pharmacy schools in the United States and the United Kingdom. It measures the quality of its research output in terms of the standing of its researchers, the level of funding attracted, publications in refereed scholarly journals, patent applications lodged, and the calibre of its research graduates. High-quality research facilities are available within all departments for students to undertake graduate work in experimental and theoretical areas of the pharmaceutical sciences.

Areas of research

Pharmaceutics - drug delivery and formulation science: utilisation of the transdermal route for the delivery of drugs, lipid-based formulation design, intestinal lymphatic transport of drugs, factors affecting the absorption of drugs across the intestinal mucosa, respiratory drug delivery, physicochemical and analytical characterisations of new drug candidates, stability and characterisation of protein drugs, absorption of protein drugs after subcutaneous administration, contributions of intestinal and hepatic metabolism to the bioavailability of drugs, powder mixing and content uniformity studies.
Medicinal Chemistry - drug design and development (supported by contributions in the fields of: computer-aided molecular design and computational chemistry, NMR spectroscopy, protein chemistry and molecular biology, syntheses and characterisation of bioactive molecules, x-ray crystallography, and mass spectrometry).
Pharmaceutical Biology and Pharmacology - drug addiction pharmacology, prostate research group, neurotransmitter and second messenger systems, and novel therapies using molecular biology approaches. A diversity of projects is available in each of these research areas using the techniques of in-vivo and in-vitro pharmacology, molecular pharmacology, biochemistry and physiology.
Pharmacy Practice - quality use of medicines, pharmaceutical education research, epidemiology and health economics, impact of drug-related morbidity, practice models, wound management, and clinical pharmacokinetics.

Research scholarships

Candidates for Doctor of Philosophy or masters by research may be eligible to apply for an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA), a Monash Research Graduate Scholarship (MGS), or a research scholarship offered through the college on the basis of academic merit. Some industry scholarships are also available to graduate students studying in the college.

Further details on eligibility and scholarship terms and conditions are available from the Monash Research Graduate School, Clayton campus.

Contact details

Victorian College of Pharmacy

Monash University

381 Royal Parade

Parkville, Victoria 3052

Australia

Research

Postgraduate research programs coordinator

Telephone: +61 3 9903 9635

Fax: +61 3 9903 9581

Email: info@vcp.monash.edu.au

http://www.vcp.monash.edu.au/students/research/

Coursework

Postgraduate coursework coordinator

Telephone: +61 3 9903 9509

Fax: +61 3 9903 9581

Email: postgrad@vcp.monash.edu.au

http://www.vcp.monash.edu.au