SPIRITUS: (3-14) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR.
This is our March 2014 update of news from the Respitech group at the WIMR.
This month, the RespiTech team have been busy developing the upcoming joint ISAM-Woolock conference in September and were pleased to announce the Keynote speakers. The program is starting to come together with a number of invited speakers and the first call for abstracts is planned for the 1st week in April.
Eric & Michele using the new JEOL desktop SEM
In the laboratory, the team have overseen the installation of a new scanning electron microscope. The bench-top SEM will significantly enhance the groups productivity as we can immediately screen particulate systems after production, allowing us to optimise engineering processes via informed decisions. Meanwhile, the group published a paper in Drug Development and Industrial Pharmacy focussed on aersosolisation of high-dose cohesive powders intended for the treatment of bronchiectasis. This is the second paper with Pharmaxis Ltd investigating the Orbital multi-breath inhaler.
As usual, we would like to congratulate members of the team for their successes. Dr Mehra Haghi was awarded a Humboldt fellowship. This highly prestigious fellowship will allow Mehra to spend a year overseas in Prof. Claus-Michael Lehr’s lab at the University of Saarbrücken in Germany. Mehra will use this opportunity to further develop her research in the area of advanced cell biology models of the lung and immunology. At the same time, Mehra was also awarded a Asthma Australia travel award. This will allow Mehra to further develop links with like minded researchers in the areas of respiratory science.
Meanwhile, Paul and Daniela received Honorary Appointments as Adjunct Professors at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Daniela and Paul have a long history of collaboration with UTS academics and will continue to build on these collaborations via a number of projects and co-supervised students at the ithree institute (Cynthia Whitchurch) and Pharmacy (Fabio Sonvico). We would also like to congratulate Michele Pozzoli who has officially transferred from Masters to PhD candidature at UTS. Michelle is supervised by Fabio, Paul and Daniela and was also awarded a $1,000 Vice Chancellors travel grant this month. He will join members of the team at RDD in Puerto Rico in May.
Respitech group on the WIMR terrace - March 2013
As usual, we would like to welcome new members/visitors and say goodbye to friends. Dave Lewis and Gemma Keegan from Chiesi returned to the Uk after a successful visit. A number of projects are already underway and the visit resulted in a number of new exciting research paths. Meanwhile Prof Carsten Ehrhardt joins us on sabbatical from Trinity College Dublin. The team are working with Carsten to develop a number of projects in the areas of applied respiratory cell molecular biology with a focus on transporters. He will give a seminar at the Institute next month. Prof Warren Finlay also visited us this month from the University of Alberta. Warren is working with the group to further establish projects in the area of nasal drug delivery. Finally, we would like to welcome Tim Cornish and Valentina Trotta to the group. Tim is undertaking an engineering honours year in the area of nasal flow path simulation and deposition and Valentina is a Cotutelle PhD student between The University of Sydney and Ferrara Universty (Italy) working in the area of anti-oxidants and respiratory therapy.