Monica (PhD BPharm(Hons) BSci) is a clinical pharmacist at Alfred Health and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Monash Addiction Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University. Her research focuses on improving the safe and effective use of medicines, with a particular emphasis on deprescribing high-risk psychotropic medicines such as opioids and benzodiazepines.

Monica’s doctoral thesis provided some of the first real-world evidence on opioid tapering trajectories in Australian primary care, providing novel insights to inform clinical practice and guidelines. Monica completed the Graduate Entry Pharmacy program and her PhD at Monash University, following a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at the University of Rochester, New York.

Monica’s work integrates clinical practice and implementation research, aiming to support safer medication use and improved patient outcomes across healthcare settings.

Monica's research focuses on improving the safe and effective use of medicines, with a particular emphasis on understanding high-risk psychotropic medicines use (e.g. opioids and benzodiazepines). Her work involves analysing electronic healthcare data to examine the patterns, predictors and patterns of medicines use. In particular, Monica has led one of the first studies to provide some of the first real-world evidence on the trajectories and predictors of opioid taper.