Dr. Ryan Keenan is a Research Fellow in the Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics theme at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Ryan completed his PhD at The University of Melbourne and Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in 2020. Following his thesis submission, Ryan completed a 5-month full-time internship with the consulting company Biointelect through the Australian Postgraduate Research Intern (APR.Intern) program. Following the internship, Ryan continued work with Biointelect and gained valuable industry and commercialisation experience.  

During his PhD, Ryan’s research focused on the proposed bidirectional relationship between neurodegenerative disorders and sleep impairments. In particular, Ryan investigated the role that mutant tau overexpression plays in mediating sleep disruptions and cognitive deficits in a neurodegenerative tau transgenic mouse model. Ryan’s experiments interrogated how genetic modulation of tau expression and pharmacological manipulation of sleep impacted the phenotype of the transgenic mouse model.

In 2021, Ryan obtained a Postdoctoral Research Fellow Position in the Cowley Laboratory (Metabolic Neurophysiology) in the Department of Physiology at Monash University. In this role, Ryan’s research focused on mechanisms of obesity and potential novel treatment strategies.

In 2025, Ryan joined the Nicolazzo Group in the Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics theme at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In this position, Ryan’s research will focus on using novel therapeutics which target neuroinflammation to improve disease outcomes in mouse models of Alzheimer’s Disease and Motor Neurone Disease.