Dr Amirali Popat (PhD) is a Pharmaceutical formulation chemist with a PhD in novel drug delivery systems from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland (UQ). He is currently a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellow at the School of Pharmacy, UQ and was chosen from a national panel for ACRE as Australia’s developing leader in clinically relevant novel drug delivery technologies.

Amirali is already successfully working with Professor Jennifer Martin and the Newcastle Pharmacology team on novel formulations of therapeutics. His expertise in formulation and delivery of problem molecules coupled with working relationships and funding support from pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies is pivotal for the successful translation of research molecules into therapeutic formulations safe for human use.

In his previous projects, Amirali has developed novel formulations for controlled drug delivery, influential contributions to the fields of pharmaceutics (27 publications with >1100 citations, and 2 patent applications in last 5 years). In such a short academic career (PhD awarded in July 2012) Amirali has secured >$4 million funding including from the NHMRC, Advanced QLD and from collaborating pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies to establish a state of art formulation and drug delivery facility at the school of Pharmacy, UQ. He is a senior Chief Investigator on a NHMRC Project Grant on the formulation of nanoparticles to target obesity and Advanced QLD grant to develop novel pesticide formulations. Some of the learning from these funded projects will be translated into ACRE to generate proof of concept data for future funding. Amirali will oversee the formulation and development of optimised cannabinoids to be used for ACRE’s clinical trial/clinical pharmacology program.