Deepika is a Doctoral candidate at RMIT University (city campus, Melbourne, Australia) as part of the Marine and Terrestrial Natural Product (MATNAP) research group, led by Professor Sylvia Urban and co-supervised by Adjunct Associate Professor Colin Rix and Dr. Robert Brkljača. Her research area is Natural Product Chemistry, studying Australian native plants for bioactive metabolites with therapeutic potential.
Dr. Robert Brkljača obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at
RMIT University, with a focus on natural products drug discovery and has
extensive experience in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Now he is an ARA-MBI
Facility Manager and Imaging Support Scientist of RMIT University. Since
completing his PhD, he has been involved in facility management and research
for several years. He has extensive experience in the field of magnetic
resonance techniques and applications. He is the facility manager and imaging
support scientist at Alfred Research Alliance-Monash Biomedical Imaging
(ARA-MBI) and assists researchers using the 9.4T MRI system including training,
troubleshooting, data analysis, and imaging procedures. Additionally, he is a
member of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance and the
American Society of Pharmacognosy.
Dr. Colin Rix
received his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne in 1972, and a Diploma of
Education in 1977. He taught Inorganic Chemistry at RMIT University, Melbourne
for over 30 years, and is now an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry in the College
of Science, Engineering and Health, School of Science, at RMIT Melbourne. His
teaching responsibilities now include laboratory demonstrating and the
supervision of Post Graduate students. His current interests include
Bio-Inorganic Chemistry, the isolation and identification of natural products
from Australian Marine and Terrestrial organisms, Inorganic Toxicology,
Analysis with Ion Selective Electrodes, and Laboratory Safety.
Sylvia Urban received her Ph.D. from The University of Melbourne in 1997. Currently, she is a Professor in the School of Science and leader of the Marine and Terrestrial Natural Product (MATNAP) research group. Her research scope of the group is to explore the biodiversity of Australian marine and terrestrial organisms (eg., Plants, fungi, sponges, algae etc…) in the quest for new compounds for drug discovery and other applications. Dr. Urban has been a project leader of two important project activities within the Drug Discovery and Chemical Synthesis theme associated with the Victorian Institute for Chemical Sciences (VICS). She authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications with 3157 citations and an h-index of 25 (Scopus, 22 December 2023).
