Staff
Program Director
Richard Day is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at UNSW and St Vincent's Hospital Sydney and Director of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at St Vincent's Hospital Sydney. He has a clinical practice in Clinical Pharmacology and Rheumatology and also a Pathology practice at St Vincent's Hospital. He was chairman of the Research Ethics Committee at St Vincent's Hospital (1990-1996) and a member of the UNSW Ethics Committee.
He sat on the Training Awards (1994-9) and on the Research Ethics Subcommittee’s (1995-97) of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He was chairman of the review of the Clinical Trials Notification Scheme for the Federal Department of Health's Therapeutic Goods Association (1993) and has chaired a review of the Pharmaceutical Services Branch of the NSW Department of Health (1996/7). He was a Director of the MBF (1998-2003).
Ric chairs the Pharmaceutical Health and Rational Use of Medicines Committee (PHARM), an expert committee advising the Federal Government on how to achieve ‘quality use of medicines’ (1999 –). He sits on the ‘Committee of Chairs’ along with the chairs of NPS, APAC and PBAC, which also advises the Federal Government and co-ordinates activities in this sector of quality use of medicines. He is a Board member (1999 – 2000; 2001-2004; 2004 -6) of the DIA (Drug Information Association), an international association of over 30,000 members and past chair of the South West Asian Pacific Committee of the DIA.
Ric has a particular interest in promoting the quality of use of medicines in the community which has found expression in membership of the PHARM Committee, chairmanship of the St Vincent's Hospital Drug Committee (1994-2003), clinical director of the NSW Medicines Information Centre (MIC), director of the St Vincent’s clinical trials centre, past membership of Australian Drug Evaluation Committee (ADEC-1991-96), independent member of the Medicines Australia (MA) Code of Conduct Subcommittee and chairmanship of NSW Therapeutic Assessment Group (NSWTAG) (1992-1999). More recently he has co-chaired the Medication Safety Taskforce of the Australian Safety and Quality Council for the Federal government (2002-4). He has research interests into the mechanisms and pharmacological treatments of the rheumatic diseases which have ranged across studies in inflammation, musculoskeletal pain, NSAIDs, antirheumatic drugs, and hypouricaemic therapies and has published over 200 papers in these areas. These interests are reflective of his clinical practice in rheumatology and clinical pharmacology. Ric has developed a number of innovative approaches to teaching therapeutics to undergraduate medical students and extends his teaching activities to involve hospital doctors and general practitioners.
Executive Officer
Ken Williams is currently Deputy Director of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, St Vincent’s Hospital and Manager of the St Vincent’s Clinical Trials Centre (CTC). The CTC undertakes Phase I-III studies with a particular interest in earlier phase drug development, and in this context provides consultative support, particularly to the emerging biotechnical industry. He originally trained in Chemistry and, following post-doctoral studies in the USA, became manager of the Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Laboratory at St Vincent’s Hospital. He has been actively involved in preparation, review and delivery of several of the Course Modules and recently has taken over the role of Executive Officer from Dick Thomas.
Ken has served on a number of Committees that include: St Vincent’s Hospital Drug Committee, St Vincent’s Campus Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee (Chairman), the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct Appeals Committee, the Biochemical Working Party of the Pathology Services Tables Committee and the National Pathology Quality Assurance Program (RCPA-AACB) Management Committee. His professional memberships include ARCS, ASCEPT, ASCPT and ARA.
His research interests have been in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, inflammation and models of inflammation and, in more recent years, also include early phase drug studies (their design, conduct and ethical considerations), drug-herbal interactions and use of microdialysis to study drug disposition in humans. These interests have resulted in many scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters. He has served on the review panels for a range of scientific journals and the editorial boards of “Chirality” and “Inflammation Research”. He undertakes peer review activities for several of the research funding agencies (eg NHMRC, Ramaciotti etc).
Ken is an “almost totally-retired” surfer, an “almost regular” jogger and bushwalker, father to 5 daughters, and “Pa” to an increasing family of grandsons, likes country music, blues, and rock and roll, watches cricket, football (union, soccer and league, but not Aussie Rules – apologies Neil, and anyone else from south of the border, or who should be).
Academics and Practitioner Teachers
Module Convenors
| Module 1 | Associate Professor Ken Williams |
| Module 2 | Associate Professor Ken Williams |
| Module 3 | Dr Franziska Loehrer |
| Module 4 | Mr Peter Yeates and Associate Professor Peter Dwyer |
| Module 5 | Dr Norma Rohde and Associate Professor Susan Walters |
| Module 6 | Ms Susan Parker and Dr Michael Lai |
| Module 7 | Associate Professor Ken Williams |
| Module 8A | Dr Robert Creek |
| Module 8B | Dr Robert Creek |
| Module 9 | Dr Peter Vervaart |
| Module 10 | Dr Peter Vervaart |
| Module 11 | Prof Ric Day and Dr Michael Kennedy |
| Module 12 | Prof Ric Day and Dr Michael Kennedy |
| Module 14 | Associate Professor Susan Walters |
| Module 15 | Associate Professor Andrew McLachlan |
| Module 16 | Mr Gary Lane |
| Module 17 | Mr Adam Gordois |
| Module 18 | Dr Helen Allars |