From left: Associate Professor Srdjan Vlajkovic and Associate Professor Deborah Young
It is my pleasure to announce that Associate Professor Srdjan Vlajkovic has been appointed to the role of Post Graduate Director – Doctoral and Associate Professor Deborah Young has been appointed as the Programme Director – PG Biomedical Sciences.
Both are important service and leadership roles in the School that directly support our existing cohorts of postgraduate students and will contribute to the ongoing enhancement and growth of our offerings in the Postgraduate space.
Srdjan is an Associate Professor of Physiology at the School of Medical Sciences. He has eight years of experience as a Departmental Graduate Advisor for doctoral students in Physiology, a passion for supporting student success and a commitment to academic excellence.
Srdjan has supervised 54 PhD, MSc and Honours students to completion and examined about a dozen PhD theses in NZ and internationally. He has developed two new MEDSCI courses related to sensory neuroscience (undergraduate and postgraduate) and has been the director of both courses for over ten years.
His research in Auditory Neuroscience has led to a better understanding of the regulation of inner ear function in health and disease, revealed novel mechanisms of adaptation to noise and provided a novel therapeutic target for hearing loss. His research has attracted national and international funding and has had a high impact on the current understanding of the role of adenosine receptors in the prevention and treatment of acquired hearing loss.
Srdjan contributes to the international research community as an Academic Editor and guest editor of several international journals. His service to the research community includes sustained contributions to professional research associations as an NZ representative. He was a founding and executive member of the Australian and New Zealand Purine Club and represented the New Zealand neuroscience research community at the Australian Neuroscience Society Council.
Deborah is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Head of the Molecular Neurotherapeutics lab. Her research interests focus on developing gene therapy and immunotherapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases. She was an inaugural recipient of an HRC Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship in 2003 and was appointed Associate Professor in 2010.
She has an h-index of 36, published 87 articles/book chapters and has been awarded ~20M funding from the HRC, Marsden Fund, FoRST (now MBIE), Neurological Foundation and Auckland Medical Research Foundation. In 2017, she was appointed as associate director at the CBR, where she was responsible for driving outreach activities such as the NZ Brain Bee and high school visits, as well as guiding the CBR Early Career Researcher Committee.