Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences

Profile

Tim Mason is a Microbiologist, working in a discipline which includes the study of Bacteria, Viruses, Vaccines and Antibiotics. He started out at the University of Kent and went on to do research there, looking at how bacteria compete against one another in the intestine. These studies took him on to Warwick University and then in 1976 here to Portsmouth where, on completing his PhD research in 1980, he became a lecturer in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. His research has continued (see British Journal of Pharmacology 2012), but his greatest pleasure comes from lecturing to undergraduates and others on the causation, treatment and prevention of infectious disease. He has been teaching on the Master of Pharmacy degree for more than thirty years,so when you take your GP’s prescription to the chemist one of his ex-students may very well dispense it for you.

He is genuinely fond of the creatures in his discipline and he finds it hard not to be on their side. “It’s fascinating to see an epidemic get underway”, he says! “One has a ringside seat to watch the combat, sometimes mortal combat, between man and microbe”.

Having retired from a full time teaching position, he is now a Visiting Lecturer at the University, in which capacity he will be able to spend more time sharing his enthusiasms with an ever widening audience. His “Plagues and Pestilence – Past and Present” lectures have been very well received by The Historical Association, The Society of Biology and the British Association for the Advancement of Science as well as many local history societies. Should your local history society, school, college or any other group be interested in such talks, invitations are always well received.

Titles to date include:-

Edward Jenner and the Smallpox Virus

Louis Pasteur and the Rabies Virus

The Plague: 1000BC to 2000AD

The Polio Story (available shortly)                                                                                                                                      

Qualifications 

BSc, MSc, PhD

Internal memberships / posts

Admissions Tutor for MPharm (Hons)
Board of Studies

External memberships / posts

Member of Institute of Learning and Teaching

Key teaching responsibilities

Level 2:  Nature of microorganisms, bacterial growth and nutrition, virus replication, microbial pathogenicity, vaccination and passive immunisation.
Level 3:  Mechanisms of resistance of selective toxicity of antimicrobial chemotherapeutic agents.