Tim Hales BSc (Hons) , PhD

Tim Hales graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Physiology from King’s College London in 1986 and a PhD from the University of Dundee in 1990. He completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Anesthesiology, University of California in Los Angeles and in 1997 was appointed Assistant Professor at the George Washington University in Washington DC where he gained tenure in 2002. He became Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine and Director of Research in Anesthesiology at GWU in 2006.
Tim returned to Dundee in 2009 as Professor of Anesthesia and non-clinical head of the Division of Neuroscience. He was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Anesthetists in 2011 and was appointed Associate Dean for Research-Led Teaching in the School of Medicine in 2017. His research group studies the mechanisms of action of anesthetics and opioid analgesics, drugs that modulate neuronal communication through ion channel modulation. The group’s work on metastatic colon cancer cells identified voltage-activated Na+ channels as potential targets for anticancer medications. Inhibition of these channels by local anesthetics inhibits cell invasion.