Michelle Rank

Michelle Rank, PhD, serves as Associate Professor in Topographic Anatomy in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Alberta in 2011 and holds a Bachelor's Degree with Honours. Her professional journey encompasses a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Newcastle from 2011 to 2015, followed by a Senior Lectureship at RMIT University from 2015 to 2019, before joining the University of Melbourne in 2019, where she advanced to her current associate professorship. Rank also leads Graduate Pathways and Professional Development initiatives.

Awarded the prestigious 2021 Melbourne Dental School of Health Sciences (MDHS) Award for Learning and Teaching Achievement, Rank excels in teaching human anatomy, with specialist expertise in neuroanatomy and musculoskeletal anatomy, to nearly 1,000 undergraduate Biomedicine and graduate Medicine students annually. She has pioneered a technology-driven curriculum featuring bespoke digital resources, including 3D digitised anatomical specimens, virtual reality, augmented reality, and multimodal apps, designed to reduce student anxiety in labs, enhance flexible learning, and cultivate compassion through person-centred methods. Her Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research investigates the impact of these innovations on educational outcomes and explores co-created authentic assessment strategies. In her research program, Rank focuses on neuroplasticity, electrophysiology, and mechanisms of motor recovery following ischemic stroke and spinal cord injury, particularly adaptive rewiring in spinal cord interneuron networks and modulation of excitatory synaptic transmission. Key publications include "Locomotion After Spinal Cord Injury Depends on Constitutive Activity in Serotonin Receptors" (2010), "Acute inhibition of acid sensing ion channel 1a after spinal cord injury selectively affects excitatory synaptic transmission but not intrinsic membrane properties in deep dorsal horn interneurons" (2023), and "Microglia are prominent producers of inflammatory cytokines during..." (2025).

Professional Email: michelle.rank@unimelb.edu.au