OMRF Club Otago - 17 October 2025

17/10/2025

Ticket details

Join us over lunch for a couple of hours of great mingling, lunch and a great speaker. Doors will open from 11:30am for a 12pm start on Friday 17th October at the Scenic Hotel Southern Cross.

Tickets are $75 incl GST each (or $65 incl GST for members) which incudes lunch and a drink or two, as well as the opportunity to mingle.

If you have a Corporate Club Otago membership, Tracey will arrange your complimentary tickets.

Contact Tracey on 021 030 4900 or [email protected] to lock your table/tickets in.

Event details

We are excited to showcase why the Foundation exists at our final Club Otago of 2025 – for “the furtherance of medical research in Otago”.

We have Professor Pete Jones and Dr Emily Gray from HeartOtago joining us. Pete is co-founder and was director of HeartOtago 2012-2024, and is a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Otago. Pete will give an overview of the research that is carried out by the HeartOtago researchers and clinicians at the University of Otago and Dunedin Hospital. Pete and Emily will also talk about their research that their labs are currently focused on. 

Pete’s research explores the role of calcium in controlling cells in the heart and brain. Specifically, it focuses on how disturbances in the movement of calcium within heart cells can lead to altered heart rhythms (arrhythmias) and heart failure. More recently it has also begun to investigate how a similar disruption of calcium signalling in neurons leads to Alzheimer's Disease. Understanding these changes has allowed the development of new drugs that one day might treat these diseases. Pete has received funding from the Otago Medical Research Foundation for his research in 2011 and 2015.

As well as being a Lecturer in the School of Physiotherapy, Emily has recently become a member of the OMRF Council. Emily’s research focuses on improving access to cardiac rehabilitation and empowering people to engage in physical activity during early recovery after heart attacks and heart surgery.

We hope you can join us for lunch to hear about some of the amazing research taking place right here in Otago.

Club Otago

Tracey can provide information if you want to find out more about Club Otago and becoming a member. We have individual and corporate membership options - see https://omrf.org.nz/events/club-otago/ for details.