Rate My Professor Natalie Hughes

Professor Hughes specializes in drug delivery, clinical pharmacokinetics, pharmaceutical analysis, medicine formulation, and protein analysis. Her research focuses on formulation science, including improved drug delivery for neonates, new treatments for mental health and pain, and topical wound healing treatments for dentistry. She collaborates with multidisciplinary teams of lab scientists, clinicians, and commercial partners to develop innovative healthcare products. She presented her Inaugural Professorial Lecture highlighting her contributions to these areas. Notable awards include the University of Otago 2017 translational research grant for severe pain treatment research and the Best Collaboration Award in the 2019 Health Research Excellence Awards for a neonatal drug administration trial. Her work has garnered over 3,100 citations on Google Scholar. Key publications encompass "Ketamine for treatment-resistant major depressive disorder" (2024), "Perinatal psychotropic dispensing: A descriptive population-based study in New Zealand" (2023), "A Sensitive Assay for Unbound Docetaxel Using Ultrafiltration" (2024), "Chitosan-Based Nanoencapsulation of Mānuka Oil for Therapeutic Applications" (2025), and contributions to ketamine and allopregnanolone studies.