Dr Mingtao ( Roger ) Liang

Biography

Dr Liang was trained as a pharmaceutical scientist and has since developed well-equipped research capabilities and leadership in the cross-disciplinary field of advanced drug delivery and nanomedicine. Dr. Liang completed his PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Queensland. His doctoral research theme was to develop nanoparticulate delivery systems for subunit vaccines, which spanned a range of fields including medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutical formulation, and immunology. Toward the end of his PhD, Dr Liang started to engage in research at the interface between polymer science and drug delivery and had gained hands-on experience in a variety of polymerisation and bioconjugation techniques. Upon completion of PhD, Dr Liang took up a postdoctoral position at UQ to investigate the biological interactions and toxicity of precisely engineered nanoparticles. This research had led to some key fundamental discoveries that resulted in several publications in the premium journals including ACS Nano, Nature Nanotechnology, Nanomedicines etc. During this time, Dr Liang was also a research teaching academic at School of Pharmacy and committed to teaching pharmacy undergraduates. After that, Dr Liang joined the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design in University of New South Wales, and his research was to develop a platform technology for the efficient delivery of albendazole towards better anti-cancer treatment. In 2011, Dr Liang accepted a lecturer position to establish drug delivery research group at the School of Biomedical Science and Pharmacy in University of Newcastle.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Queensland, 2008

Research

Research keywords

• Biomaterials
• Drug delivery
• Nanomedicine
• Pharmaceutics

Research expertise

Dr Liang’s current research centres on advanced drug delivery and nanomedicine, which are at the interface of multidisciplinary fields including chemical & molecular engineering, materials science, chemistry, biotechnology and medicine. His research mainly involves developing novel biomaterials, utilizing self-assembly strategies to formulate biomaterials into desired nano-, micro- and macroscopic structures, and studying applications of these engineered structures for disease treatment and diagnosis.

Languages

• Chinese
• English

Teaching

Teaching keywords

• Pharmaceutics
• Pharmacy Practice

Teaching expertise

I mainly teach into pharmaceutics and pharmacy practice within Master of Pharmacy program. In addition, I also deliver guest lectures into Bachelor of Biomedical Science program in the field of drug delivery.