Charles Cox

Dr Charles Cox completed his PhD in 2013, following on from a Master’s degree (Honours 1st class) in Pharmacy; both at Cardiff University, UK. As a qualified pharmacist Dr Cox practiced in both hospital and community settings (2008-2013) prior to joining the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

After post-doctoral training in Professor Boris Martinac’s laboratory, Dr Cox was appointed as a Group Leader at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (2019-present) and holds an appointment (0.2FTE) at the University of New South Wales.

The primary interest of Dr Cox’s group is cardiovascular mechanobiology. The heart beats 3.5 billion times in the average person’s life span and in doing so generates force to propel blood through the circulation. Dr Cox’s over-arching research interest is in understanding the molecular mechanisms and pathways by which these physical forces are sensed by cells. In particular how ion channels sense and respond to these signals within the cardiovascular system in both health and disease.

In 2015 Dr Cox was awarded the Young Biophysicist of the Year Award from the Australian Society of Biophysics and recently received a prestigious New South Wales Health EMC Fellowship to support his work. He is part of a Discovery Project funded by the ARC to understand how red blood cells maintain their shape and has received financial support from St Vincent’s Clinic Foundation.