Dr. Rupenthal is the Deputy Head and an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, the University of Auckland, and acts as Director of the Buchanan Ocular Therapeutics Unit (www.botu.nz), which aims to translate ocular therapeutic related scientific research into the clinical setting, whether pharmaceutical, cell or technology based. Ilva’s team is researching various drugs and drug delivery systems for the management of inflammatory and degenerative eye conditions, with patented technologies licensed to biotechnology companies. She obtained a BPharm from the Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Ilva has published close to 100 papers and recently received a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. She is also the recipient of the 2016 Health Research Council of New Zealand Emerging Researcher Excellence Award as well as a 2014 University Early Career Research Excellence Award with over NZD13 million in funding received so far.
Ilva has been a strong supporter of the Controlled Release Society (CRS) since 2005. She served as Postgraduate Representative (2005-2008), Secretary (2009-2010) and Committee Member (2013-2020) of the New Zealand Local Chapter. She was also the Chair of the Ocular Drug Delivery Focus Group (2013-2015), acted as Annual Meeting Planning Committee Member (2014-2015) and organized a very successful Ocular Drug Delivery Workshop at the 2015 Annual Meeting. More recently, she served as Secretary (2020-2021) and Director-at-Large (2017-2020) of CRS, acting as the Local Chapter Board Liaison to strengthen the international CRS community. Besides other editorial roles, Ilva currently also acts as Special Issue Editor for Drug Delivery and Translational Research.
