Chin Loh
Graduate
Pharmacy
For Chin Loh, a career in Pharmacy was more than the chance to dispense medicines and advice - it was also a path into the world of business.
"I'd just returned to Dunedin from Australia in 2000, when two pharmacies across the road from each other came up for sale," he recalls. "From the day I started studying at Otago my dream was to own my own pharmacy, so I leapt at the opportunity."
Chin closed one store and amalgamated the two businesses together, before buying an adjacent health-food shop which he is now combining with the pharmacy - quite literally tearing down the walls between them.
"It's part of a new concept I have with my retail manager, Lisa Wells. I see complementary and conventional health converging, and in this way we can offer our customers a much more holistic health service."
He won Young Pharmacist of the Year in the 2002 New Zealand Pharmacy awards.
Meanwhile Pharmacy PhD student Clare Strachan is researching the precise crystal structures of drugs. "The same drug can have different crystal forms, which absorb into the body at different rates," she explains, "so it's essential to examine the exact crystal structure of a particular drug and check that it doesn't change over time."
Clare Strachan
Student
Pharmacy
Understandably, the research has been of interest to pharmaceutical companies, who are required by drug-monitoring agencies such as the FDA to test drug crystallinity.
"I've been working closely with a firm in England investigating potential applications of the technology," she says. "It's meant I've had to make some trips to Europe during my PhD, but I guess that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!"