Professor Trevor Day commenced as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Science and Technology on 26 March 2012. He comes to Deakin from the University of Newcastle (UoN) where, for the past six years, was Head of the School of Biomedical Sciences & Pharmacy, one of that institution's largest and most research intensive Schools. Notably, his School's research outputs contributed very substantially to two of the 4s and three of the 5s obtained by UoN in the first Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) audit.
Trevor completed a PhD in neurobiology at Flinders University in 1981 and then undertook postdoctoral training in Canada, spending three years at McGill University and a year at the University of Western Ontario. He subsequently held ongoing appointments at the University of Otago (1986-1990) and the University of Queensland (1990-2003), and a visiting scientist appointment at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich (1998).
Trevor's career has involved a balance of activities in research and teaching. Most of his research has concerned the characterisation of brain pathways that underpin adaptive responses to physical and psychological stress. This work has been supported by peer-reviewed research funding from a total of 12 separate agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany and the United States. He has served as a member of several nationally competitive grant review panels, the Management Committee of the Hunter Medical Research Institute, and the editorial board of the journal Stress. With regard to teaching, Trevor holds a postgraduate qualification in Education and has been the recipient of several teaching awards and grants.
While at the University of Queensland Trevor served as interim Director of that institution's Tertiary and Educational Development Institute and was a principal author of their policy on the flexible delivery of courses. He also has a very keen interest in staff development and was the founder and sponsor of the University of Newcastle's Mentor@UoN mentoring program for academics and early career researchers.