Dr Shyamal Das is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, New Zealand. Prior to this, he was a research fellow for five years at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences from where he completed his PhD. He is also the current President (2023–2024) of the Otago Medical School Research Society and elected President (2024-2025) of the NZ Chapter of the Controlled Release Society.
Dr Das leads the research on dry powder inhalers (DPI) in New Zealand. He focuses on high dose DPIs for lung infections such as tuberculosis (TB), and is leading a Phase I Clinical study for TB treatment. He is recognized leader of powdersurface energy characterization. His current research also includes understanding dissolution in the lungs, microRNA and cannabinoids delivery. Dr Das secured research funding of $2.3M, published >100 peer reviewed publications, most of these are in top quartile journals, and contributed to a further 120 abstracts and presentations. He has been an invited speaker at 25 conferences and seminars including the prestigious RDD Europe, the Inhalation Asia Conference 2015, a keynote speech at an international conference. In addition to mentoring 8 Postdoctoral/Assistant Research Fellows, he is or has been the supervisor of 8 PhD, 1 Masters, 18 Honours, and 83 other research students. His PhD graduates secured positions in prestigious universities and industries. Theses of two students were enlisted as Exceptional Theses in the Division of Health Sciences.
Dr Das is an excellent teacher, and he received multiple awards for teaching from the University of Otago including the ‘Top Five Teachers 2016’, ‘Premier Lecturer 2017 for Health Science Division’, the School of Pharmacy (SOP)’s ‘Excellence in Teaching Award 2016’ and ‘The Engagement Award 2021’and ‘Supervisor of the Year 2017 for the Health Science Division’. He is a UK Council of Graduate Education Recognized Research Supervisor (2022). He was also awarded School’s ‘Emerging Researcher Award 2016’ and the ‘Research Excellence Award 2019’ in the senior category, and the ‘Best Research Paper of the Year Award’ in 2019, 2020 and 2021 from Green Cross Health Pharmacy Awards. He has developed and led BPharm(Hons) Programme and a number of papers.
Dr Das serve on the Editorial Board of International Journal of Pharmaceutics (IJP) and Pharmaceutics, and acted as Editor of two special issues of IJP. He is an Associate Editor of Frontiers of Drug Delivery’s Respiratory Drug Delivery section, and a member of DDL Scientific Committee since 2015. Dr Das was a session chair of conferences, including DDL in and Inhalation Asia conference. He organized a symposium at the APSA Conference in 2021 and a workshop on inhaler therapy at the New Zealand International Science Festival (NZISF) in 2021 and 2023. Dr Das is a sought-after grant reviewer internationally and a Reviewer and Judge for international conferences including DDL, Inhalation Asia and APSA. He has examined 23 PhD and Masters theses and peer reviewed 115 manuscripts for high-impact journals. He was declared a KiwiBank Local Hero 2021 as a part of New Zealanders of the Year competition.
Respiratory drug delivery platform in New Zealand
Respiratory diseases are a major health issue in New Zealand. Although expertise on aetiology, disease mechanisms, infectious agents, drug development, clinical and epidemiological research are spread all over the country, there is no shared platform for these researchers. Moreover, research on formulation for inhaled delivery is only done in the ‘Das laboratory’ in the University of Otago. The goal of this project is to bring lung scientists of the country together to share their knowledge and interact among themselves and globally for greater impact. This platform will support and provide mentorship for academics and postgraduate students through: a) setting up a website to help with outreach efforts. b) organizing workshops, symposiums or conferences; d) learning from opinion leaders of respiratory drug delivery.
The Respiratory Drug Delivery is unique in New Zealand and complementary to the research conducted by many organizations. My laboratory initiated and is now continuing research on dry powder inhaler. My goal is to create a respiratory research platform to bring together expertise currently dispersed across the University of Otago to facilitate a programme bid in respiratory disease to enable translation/commercialisation. The overarching goal is to create a platform for the research and translation of respiratory medicines. This platform will integrate entrepreneurs for translation of research with policy makers, to become a focal point for research translation, communicating with key stakeholders and entrepreneurs in respiratory diseases. This platform will expand national research collaborations to enable: access to translational funding; strengthened cross-disciplinary research; identification of critical expertise and strong external linkages to industry and the community. Thus, this platform is aiming to foster, develop and promote research into respiratory diseases in New Zealand.