By J.A. Suys
AAPS members and the chapter committee at Monash University (Parkville) with Reina Bendayan, Pharm.D. (front row, 4th from left).
The Monash University AAPS student chapter is one of several international AAPS student chapters and the first AAPS student chapter in Australia. The chapter was founded in 2008 by a group of doctoral students in the Monash University Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Melbourne and was approved by the AAPS Executive Council in May 2008. Now, in 2018, the chapter counts more than 20 active committee members and around 50 AAPS members in the whole faculty. As our faculty is geographically isolated from the main campus, we aim to organize events that will specifically benefit students from a pharmacy and pharmaceutical science background. Our campus has more than 100 doctoral and honour students, which is the reason why our events focus on career development. We want to make sure students have the skills and knowledge to transition into their next career move.
The AAPS student chapter at a dinner with Jashvant Unadkat, Ph.D. (4th from right), who was on sabbatical at Monash University.
The year 2017 was filled with educative encounters and diverse events. We had various AAPS fellows over, who gave scientific seminars followed by Q&A sessions during which students could mingle and ask their most pertinent questions. One of these AAPS fellows was Jashvant Unadkat, Ph.D., from the University of Washington, who stayed at our faculty for a 6 month sabbatical. He taught us about new ways to determine tissue concentrations with proteomics and told us how to maintain a healthy work-life balance in research.
One of our key missions is to showcase career paths for students, and therefore the chapter executive board organized an event around science public speaking at the start of the year. This unusual career was introduced by Andi Horvath, Ph.D., an international award-winning podcaster, who is also a science producer and presenter. (In)Formal science communication is an essential quality that scientists nowadays must have to effectively get the message across about their research. This workshop was organized as part of a range of preparatory events to prepare students for the Career Expo, during which students could present their research and interact with professionals.
At the Cerebral Vascular Biology conference, organized by Joseph Nicolazzo, Ph.D., AAPS members had the opportunity to meet Reina Bendayan, Pharm.D. (from the University of Toronto), who presented the scientific seminar HIV-1 brain associated inflammation and novel pharmacological treatment approaches. She also met with members and gave a workshop about AAPS and networking skills.
To continue to offer students professional development opportunities, the chapter highlighted possibilities to bridge the gap between research in industry and academia by offering a workshop about science bio-tech consultancy, presented by Lieven Huang, Ph.D. This session was very beneficial for entrepreneurial minded students who are interested in biotechnology business development.
Our usual Friday afternoon beer club provides a platform for students to mingle and network with speakers, which effectively connects young researchers with potential new employers!
It was a rich year full of events for our AAPS chapter, during which we grew as a team and developed a series of events to prepare students for a whole range of careers in academia, industry, corporate, government, etc. We are very proud of what we achieved with these events at our campus with the ongoing support of our AAPS faculty advisor, Joseph Nicolazzo, Ph.D. We are excited about the direction this chapter is taking, and in 2018 we hope to continue enriching students’ experience on campus with the focus on the AAPS foundations.
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