Niru Nirthanan

Professor S Niru Nirthanan, MBBS, PhD, FRCP (Edin), SFHEA (UK), FAcadMEd (UK) FBPhS is the Dean of Medicine and Program Director for the Doctor of Medicine Program in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at Griffith University, Australia. As Professor of Pharmacology, he is the lead for the discipline; with broader interests in medical education also focusing on future-ready program design, technology-enabled education, transitions to medical school, medical humanities and service-learning in health professions. Prof. Nirthanan has previously held the roles of Deputy Head for Learning & Teaching in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences (2021 – 2022) and Program Director for Medical and Biomedical Sciences in the School of Medical Sciences (2009 – 2020).

Prof. Nirthanan is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and holds Fellowships of the Academy of Medical Educators (UK), ASPET Academy of Pharmacology Educators (USA) and British Pharmacological Society (BPS). He also serves as the Lead, International Pharmacology Network, Academic Ambassador (Australia), and on the panel of the International Advisory Group for the British Pharmacological Society. He is a member of the Executive Committee for Pharmacology Education and the Partnerships Committee of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). Prof. Nirthanan is the recipient of an Australian National Citation for Teaching (2011), Griffith Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010) and the BPS Humphrey Rang Prize for Clinical Pharmacology (2021).

Prof. Nirthanan's PhD in pharmacology and protein chemistry at the School of Medicine, National University of Singapore was awarded the University Medal for the Most Outstanding Doctoral Research and the International Society for Toxinology World Congress Award in 2002. He received the Alice & Joseph Brooks Fellowship in Neurobiology from the Harvard Medical School, Boston, to conduct postdoctoral research from 2002 to 2005, where he identified and characterized the binding pocket of positive allosteric effectors in the nicotinic receptor, a discovery with potential for development of novel drugs for Alzheimer's disease. Prof. Nirthanan joined the National Neuroscience Institute of Singapore as Principal Investigator in 2006 and established a Neuropharmacology Laboratory, with over $ 2.8 M in nationally competitive and academic grant funding. His current research in neuropharmacology and toxinology at Griffith University, underpinned by international collaborations, focuses on the role of nicotinic receptors in health and disease and discovery of therapeutic leads from animal venoms. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Toxin Reviews (Taylor & Francis, UK).