Expressions of Interest - Interim Head, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food

The School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) for the leadership position of Professor and Interim Head, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food. The opportunity is open to all Level E academics within the school.

The main responsibilities of the Interim Head, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food will include but are not limited to: 

• Provide high-level strategic leadership of the Department
• Contribute to the high-level strategic leadership of the School 
• Take responsibility for staff leadership and management in accordance with University policies
• Provide strong and committed leadership in teaching, curriculum development and research training 
• Maintain and broaden collaborative partnerships internally, with relevant faculties and departments/schools within the University, and externally with the community, service providers and industry. 

Further details about the responsibilities of this leadership role and requirements are outlined in the Position Description.

Employment Type: Full time 

Duration: Up to 3 months with the possibility of extension 

Process for Expressions of Interest

Expressions of Interest are now open until 4 August 2023 at 11.55pm AEST

EOIs should consist of a brief (no more than 1 page) Executive Summary outlining your vision for the role along with challenges and opportunities for the department, together with a detailed CV, submitted via email to - peter.ebeling@monash.edu. 

Interviews for the Interim Head of Department will take place on the afternoon of Monday 7 August via Zoom. 

The substantive role of Professor and Head, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food will be advertised internally and externally in the coming weeks.

For a confidential discussion about the opportunity please contact Prof Peter Ebeling on peter.ebeling@monash.edu

Paying it Forward

Associate Professor Sally Catt is researching sperm selection and needs able-bodied volunteers.

Her team is comparing a device called a Zymot with traditional density gradient testing. The Zymot separates sperm without the need for sperm-damaging centrifugation. 

Please donate and/or recruit donors within your networks.

Donors receive a complimentary extensive semen analysis and the Education Program in Reproduction and Development provides a $20 supermarket voucher for each donation.

Volunteering leaves people with a good feeling. This one, a very good feeling. 

Please apply via this form.

For any questions you may have please contact Associate Professor Sally Catt at sally.catt@monash.edu

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What is a ZyMot? A ZyMot is a device, also called a chip, which can be used in an IVF laboratory to prepare and select sperm for insemination by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).  A ZyMot relies on the sperm actively swimming through the membrane filter in the chip, demonstrating motility.

Please visit the EPRD web page for more information on the Education Program in Reproduction and Development.

 

Stronger Together

Monday 17 July saw the launch of the Sub-Faculty of Clinical and Molecular Medicine (CaMM) where we heard from inaugural Dean of CaMM, Professor Eric Morand, who is relishing the opportunity to develop high-level strategic activities for the mutual benefit of the four organisations that sit within CaMM.

Following from Eric, we heard from Professor Helena Teede AM, Director of MCHRI, Professor Steve Nicholls, Director of Victorian Heart Institute, Professor Elizabeth Hartland, Director of the Hudson Institute, and Professor Peter Ebeling AO in his capacity as Interim Head of SCS.

Important takeaways

• It’s the time to think bigger
• The timing is perfect for the creation of the sub-faculty due to our massive growth in research and education
• Our collaborative histories are strong and we can capitalise on this
• We have a breadth of clinicians, researchers, and professional staff who are excited about future endeavours
• Our embedded programs, especially in gender equity, flow from human resource management to patient centricity and back again
• Our ethos of working to make the lives of patients longer, healthier and happier is endemic in everything we do
• There’s no limit to how bold we can be with our research agenda 

As Eric said, when governments and industry need to access exemplary clinical and research knowledge, their first point of contact is to be the Sub-Faculty of Clinical and Molecular Medicine at Monash University. Let’s make it happen. 

Reproductive Biology Stars

Congratulations to the following Education Program in Reproduction and Development  (EPRD) staff members

• Kiri Beilby who had the following abstract accepted for oral presentation at ESHRE, June 2023. Beilby, K., & Hammarberg, K. (2023). O-089 Using ChatGPT to answer patient questions about fertility: the quality of information generated by a deep learning language model. Human Reproduction, 38(Supplement_1), dead093-103.
• Fab Horta presented his abstract 'Novel and scalable non-invasive metabolic imaging of early embryos using a lab-on-a-chip approach' at ESHRE, June 2023.  
• Will Leong had his abstract 'Common problems faced by Indian Assisted Reproductive Technologies laboratory professionals' accepted for presentation at ASPIRE, September 2023.
• Mulyoto Pangestu had his abstract 'Stress and occupation impair male infertility' M. Pangestu, A. Rahadian, Lestari, SW. accepted to present at ASPIRE September 2023.

Congratulations to our PhD students and a former MCE student

• Ezra Kneebone, PhD candidate, Dept of O & G, for having the poster 'Assessing mouse embryol metabolic activity and metabolic modulation through NAD(P)H with non-invasive adapted confocal microscopy' accepted and presented at ESHRE 2023.
• Hope Newman, PhD candidate, Dept of O & G, who will be presenting her poster ‘Assessing mouse embryo metabolic activity and metabolic modulation through NAD(P)H with non-invasive adapted confocal microscopy’ at the ASRM conference October 2023. 
• Mohamed Salih, PhD candidate, Dept of O & G, will be presenting his abstract 'Deep learning classification integrating embryo images with associated clinical information from IVF treatments' at ASPIRE, September 2023.
• Azelle Hawdon (former MCE student) won the FSANZ Best Scientific Paper award and FSANZ, June 2023.  

My Cousin Has That

Coming to a laptop near you in the next couple of weeks is the SCS podcast series My Cousin Has That.

Associate Professor Joshua Ooi and Dr Julie Monk discuss their grand plans for preventing and curing autoimmune disease. Sitting alongside autoimmune specialists, clinician scientists, and some pretty amazing patients, they talk about how it’s sometimes not helpful to say “My cousin has that.”

Watch this space!