Rate My Professor Alina Arulsamy

Dr. Alina Arulsamy is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Neuropharmacology Research Laboratory at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. Her academic journey commenced in 2013 with an honours research project at the Brain Research Institute of Monash Sunway, leading to a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Medical Bioscience from Monash University in 2014. She then served as a research assistant at Monash University Malaysia before securing a full Beacon of Enlightenment PhD scholarship at the University of Adelaide, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Anatomy and Pathology in 2019. Her doctoral thesis, titled 'From Trauma to Neurodegeneration: A One-Year Time Progression of Functional Impairments and its Associated Neuropathological Link Following Varied Severity of Experimental Diffuse Traumatic Brain Injury,' earned a Dean's commendation for research excellence and a shortlisting for the CMAX award. Returning to Monash University Malaysia in March 2020 as a postdoctoral research fellow under Dr. Mohmad Farooq Shaikh, she advanced to her current lecturing position, supervising Year 5 medical students in Scholarly Intensive Placement projects and teaching courses such as Fundamentals of Biomedical Sciences, Problem-Based Learning, and neuroscience-related anatomy and physiology.

Dr. Arulsamy's research expertise centers on traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, neuropsychiatric disorders, animal behavior studies, gut microbiota analysis, and nanoformulations for drug delivery. As a core member of the Neuroscience Research Strength leading the Neurology arm, she has secured multiple internal grants as principal investigator, including JCSMHS Seed Grants in 2020 (RM10,000), 2022 (RM10,000), and 2023 (RM21,400), the ECR Grant in 2021 (RM20,000), and contributed to a RM100,000 Strategic Grant as co-investigator. Notable awards include the IBRO World Congress Travel Grant (2023), ILAE Neurobiology Commission Research Skills Bursary (2022), Malaysian Society of Neuroscience Education Grant (2022), Best Poster Presentation (2022), and Best Proposal Presentation (2022). Her key publications feature 'An Expanded Narrative Review of Neurotransmitters on Alzheimer’s Disease: The Role of Therapeutic Interventions on Neurotransmission' (2025), 'A qualitative study exploring physician perspectives on a cardiac-based seizure prediction digital service for epilepsy management' (2025), 'Exploring metabolic biomarkers and pathways in pharmacoresistant epilepsy: A systematic review' (2025), 'HMGB1 blood levels and neurological outcomes after traumatic brain injury: Insights from an exploratory study' (2025), and 'In Silico exploration of Karanjin for anti-obesity potential through ADMET profiling, network pharmacology, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulations' (2025). She holds executive committee roles with Persatuan Epilepsi Malaysia and Epilepsy Council Malaysia since 2022, served as secretariat for the First Malaysian Epilepsy Congress 2021 and 34th MSPP Scientific Meeting 2021, and contributes to peer review activities.