Dr Ethan Pacchini

Biography

Ethan is a teaching-focused Lecturer in Pharmacy with extensive experience in undergraduate science education. Ethan holds a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where his doctoral research involved investigating a new class of fatty acid-based mitochondrial uncouplers and their therapeutic potential. This work spanned synthetic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, cell biology, and pharmacology, and contributed to the development mild mitochondrial uncouplers which have potential applications in treating obesity.

Since 2021, Ethan has held a range of teaching and leadership roles including Lead and Co-Subject Coordinator, Lead Demonstrator, and Workshop Designer across a range of subjects within chemistry, life science, and pharmacology at UTS. In these roles, Ethan was responsible for coordinating subject delivery, managing teaching teams, designing assessments, and ensuring alignment between learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment tasks.

His teaching practice is grounded in active learning and guided problem-solving, with a strong emphasis on designing engaging, flexible learning experiences for both on-campus and online cohorts. He adopts a conceptually integrated approach to teaching, supporting students to connect ideas across disciplines rather than learning content in isolation. His assessment design is intentionally structured as “assessment for learning”, using low-stakes tasks to build confidence and capability ahead of higher-stakes evaluation. He also embeds employability-focused skills throughout his teaching, including communication, teamwork, and ethical decision-making in professional contexts.

Alongside his teaching, Ethan maintains active research interests in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, with a focus on the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of small molecules with therapeutic potential. He supervises Honours and HDR projects and is committed to supporting the development of the next generation of scientists and pharmacists through high-quality, student-centred education.