Introduction to the faculty - Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

About the faculty

For more than 125 years, the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (formerly the Victorian College of Pharmacy) has played a major role in pharmacy education, pharmaceutical sciences research and pharmacy practice research. It is one of Australia's leading schools of pharmacy.

The faculty is located at Monash's Parkville campus, in close proximity to Melbourne’s CBD and other leading research organisations, residential colleges and teaching hospitals in the `Parkville strip'. The Parkville campus is home to the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences which comprises the largest and most experienced group of pharmaceutical research scientists in Australia. The campus has excellent research and teaching laboratories as well as a dedicated pharmaceutical science library and state of the art teaching facilities.

The faculty 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.

Research profile

Leading-edge research is conducted at the faculty within the structure of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. We have close links with researchers in other faculties of the university - as well as collaborations with other Australian and international universities, and national and international members of the pharmaceutical industry and profession.

The faculty benchmarks its research effort against the best pharmacy schools in the world. 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 the institute for students to undertake graduate work in experimental and theoretical areas of the pharmaceutical sciences.

Areas of research

All research activity and research training at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is positioned either within the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science (MIPS) or within the Department of Pharmacy Practice.

MIPS

The three MIPS research themes are outlined below.

Medicinal Chemistry and drug action

The specific foci of this theme include projects and research activity in structure based drug design, synthetic medicinal chemistry, functional biology and drug action or stem cell biology. More specifically these projects would involve 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), drug addiction pharmacology, prostate research, 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.

Drug candidate optimisation

The drug candidate optimisation area provides collaborative lead candidate optimisation in support of emerging drug discovery programs. Lead optimisation facilitates the informed identification and selection of drug candidates through an integrated assessment of their chemical, metabolic, biopharmaceutical and developmental properties.

Drug delivery disposition and dynamics

Drug delivery disposition and dynamics includes research into 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.

Contributions from all three research themes within the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science are currently focusing on infectious diseases including malaria, cancer and CNS disease.

Department of Pharmacy Practice

The Department of Pharmacy Practice research focus is on quality and safe 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 faculty on the basis of academic merit. Some industry scholarships are also available to graduate students studying in the faculty.

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

Contact details

Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

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@pharm.monash.edu.au

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

Coursework

Postgraduate coursework coordinator

Telephone: +61 3 9903 9509

Fax: +61 3 9903 9581

Email: postgrad@pharm.monash.edu.au

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