SUBJECT: Postdoctoral / research fellow enquiry — polymeric delivery, antimicrobial formulation, filed patent
TO: greg.walker@otago.ac.nz

Dear Associate Professor Walker,

I completed a PhD in pharmaceutics at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and I am writing to ask whether you have, or would support, a postdoctoral or research fellow appointment. I noticed your profile advertises PhD projects — I already hold a doctorate, so I wanted to ask the right question rather than apply to the wrong thing.

Your stated interest is the physico-chemical principles by which a delivery system changes the absorption, disposition and fate of a bioactive. That is what I spent eight years measuring. My doctoral system was a mesoporous polydopamine Pickering emulsion — a polymeric carrier — co-loading two agents with incompatible solubility and release requirements, optimised against loading, encapsulation efficiency, size distribution, surface charge, stability and release, and characterised by DLS, zeta potential, TEM, SEM, HPLC and UV-Vis.

Two further points of contact. I am the named inventor on an Indian patent application (No. 202421042057) for a transdermal system delivering a Curcuma longa flavonoid fraction for acne, whose evaluation included antimicrobial activity, skin permeation and in vivo safety — and I understand a new class of antimicrobials is one of your MBIE programmes. And I took that formulation from concept to filing, which given your own route into academia via a topical haemostat I suspect you will read as the relevant credential.

The doctoral work is published in Acta Pharmacologica Sinica (46:3314-3326), joint first author. I ran the full in vivo programme independently, including ethics approval, biodistribution and histopathology.

I have not worked in veterinary formulation, biopharmaceuticals, GMP or scale-up.

My CV and a short research statement are attached. I would welcome a conversation about whether a position or a co-written application is the more realistic route.

With best regards,

Dr. Dipika Ramdas Kalambhe
Ph.D. Pharmaceutics, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences
doctordipikaoffical555@gmail.com | +971 50 965 9103
Portfolio: https://dipika.pristellar.com
Google Scholar: 324 citations, h-index 3 | ORCID 0009-0007-0026-4638