Guest Speaker: Professor Michelle McIntosh
This year for International Women’s Day we are thrilled to welcome Michelle McIntosh (Class of 1991), as our incredibly inspirational guest speaker!Michelle was awarded her PhD (Pharmaceutics) in 2000 from Monash University, then undertook a post-doctoral fellowship in The Center for Drug Delivery Research, University of Kansas where she gained experience in the development of parenteral formulations of poorly water soluble drugs.
In 2002 Michelle was appointed as the Assistant Director of the Center to oversee a State funded program to build the local biotechnology industry and commercialise university based technologies. In 2006, Michelle returned to the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), to lead a major research program in pulmonary drug delivery. This program has evolved to focus on developing inhaled delivery systems as an alternative to injectable medicines for low resource settings. Most recently this has seen the development of inhaled delivery of oxytocin, designed to prevent unnecessary deaths in the developing world due excessive blood loss in child birth.
Michelle’s work has been recognised by former US Secretary of State and Presidential Candidate, Hilary Clinton, as having the potential to be transformational in the field of maternal healthcare. In 2013 Michelle’s work won The Australian Innovation Challenge Award and in early 2014 she presented her work on inhaled oxytocin at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. In 2014 Michelle was acknowledged at the highest level of the University when she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s award for Excellence in Research Impact (Economic and Social Impact) and in 2017 she was awarded the National Foundation for Medical Research Innovation John Dixon Hughes Medal.
Michelle became an Associate Professor at MIPS in 2015 and since 2016 has been the Course Director for the Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University. She is also the founding Director of both the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC) and the HMSTrust Laboratory.
