Medical & Nursing Education

Biography

Presently he acts as Director of Education for ADInstruments,New Zealand. He is also is a member of the IUPS Education Committee, and continues to serve on Grant Reviewing Committees of the Health Research Council of NZ. Professor A. D. C. (Tony) Macknight graduated MBChB from the University of Otago Medical School in 1963. After a year as a House Surgeon working for the Auckland Hospital Board, he returned to the University of Otago Department of Physiology where he completed a PhD in 1968 and an MD in 1969 studying aspects of cell volume regulation under the supervision of Professor James Robinson. He then spent two years doing postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Professor Alexander Leaf working on epithelial transport. He returned to a position as Lecturer in Physiology at the University of Otago in 1971. In 1981 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and in 1984 he was appointed as the Wolf Harris Professor of Physiology at the University of Otago, a position he held until his retirement from full-time academic work at the beginning of 2002. He continued his research until 2007, his research group in Otago collaborating with the group headed by Professor Mortimer Civan at the University of Pennsylvania in a study of the transport pathways involved in the production of the aqueous humour.

Research Interest

In addition to his research interests, he played a major role in the introduction in 1987 of problem-based, case- oriented learning in physiology for medical students at the University of Otago. During the 1990s he was a key member of the Curriculum Development group that designed and implemented a new, systems-based, case-related two year preclinical medical course. He also initiated the development of the computer-based data acquisition system for use in biomedical teaching and research that is now marketed internationally by ADInstruments as the PowerLab system and is used in universities, research institutes and industry throughout the world.