Dr. Uma Devi Palanisamy completed her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and furthered to obtain an MPhil from the University of Malaya. She pursued her PhD at Cambridge on a project designing affinity ligands for the selective binding of the glycoprotein pharmaceuticals. While at the University of Cambridge she was the won several awards which included the Roche ''Young Investigators Award, Third Year Student’s Prize and together with her team won the "Queens' Award for Technological Advancement", UK. Prior to joining Monash she was in SIRIM (a research based industrial institute) for a period of 17 years, where she has carried out extensive work to aid natural product research in Malaysia. Her research expertise are in screening local natural resources for its cosmeceutical, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical content and to develop medium-throughput screening techniques particularly to identify antioxidants, antiarthritics, antiglycemic, antifungals - to name a few. She was also attached to a Japanese Pharmaceutical company for a period of six months where she purified antifungals and immunomodulant bioactives from soil microorganisms. She received a number of innovation awards, six patents and a large number of publications. She sits in the editorial committee of several international journals including the Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences, Journal of Biotechnology, Oxidants and Antioxidants in Medical Science and Emirates Journal of Food and Agriculture.
Dr. Uma Devi Palanisamy research area includes Exposure to randomized clinical trials in nutritional research, particularly on the effect of dietary modification on glycemic control and CVD risk factors in Type 2 Diabetes patients, Identify and evaluate bioactives from natural sources for its potential health benefits, with particular interest in plant bioactives for diabetes and obesity, Screening of local natural resources for cosmeceutical, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical content and develop medium-throughput screening techniques to aid the growth of the natural product research in Malaysia and Purification and characterisation of bioactives from various plant sources intended for cosmeceutical, nutraceutical or pharmaceutical application Computational and combinatorial chemistry tools to aid drug discovery.
