Eckel, a faculty member in the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education, joined the School in 1966 and established the UNC Hospital Residency Program in 1967. To honor his accomplishments, the residency program presented Eckel with a newly established Pharmacy Leadership Award bearing his name. Eckel also delivered a lecture on lessons he learned over the course of his career.

Since coming to UNC in 1969, Caiola, chair of the School's Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education, has served in a variety of positions responsible for educating pharmacists. He has received his share of accolades for his contribution to pharmacy in the state with some recent ones being the Don Blanton Award and 2007 Acute Care Practice Forum Pharmacist of the Year from the North Carolina Association of Pharmacists.

Ferreri is a clinical associate professor and director of the PGY1 Community Pharmacy Residency Program. Her work  focuses  on advancing clinical practice in community pharmacy settings, particularly in the areas of immunization, diabetes, and medication therapy management.

“Dr. Ferreri is a recognized leader and innovator in clinical pharmacy practice at the School, state, and national level,” says Robert Blouin, dean of the School. “She is very strongly committed to advancing the profession and serves as a wonderful role model for others.

Caiola is retiring after a distinguished career that has spanned more than forty years at the School. Since coming to UNC in 1969, he has served in a variety of positions responsible for educating pharmacists. He has received his share of accolades for his contribution to pharmacy in the state with some recent ones being the Don Blanton Award and 2007 Acute Care Practice Forum Pharmacist of the Year from the North Carolina Association of Pharmacists.

“There is no aspect of pharmacy education in North Carolina that Steve Caiola has not improved over the past four decades,” Blouin says. “Every student who has passed through this school and every pharmacist who practiced in North Carolina during his tenure owes him a debt for the contributions he has made to the profession.”

Ferreri demonstrates a similar commitment to pharmacy practice. She is a fellow of the American Pharmacists Association and was named as its Media Spokesperson of the Year in 2007 for her efforts in educating the public about health issues and the roles pharmacists play. She is a past member of the NCAP board of directors and was that organization’s Distinguished Young Pharmacist of the Year in 2007. 

She received her BS in pharmacy from the University of Connecticut and her PharmD from Campbell University. She completed a PGY1 hospital residency at the University of Connecticut Health Care Center and her PGY1 community residency with Ward Drug in Nashville, North Carolina. Ferreri joined the UNC faculty in 2001 and became the director of the School’s CPRP in 2005.

A national search for a permanent chair of the division is currently underway.

“I am thrilled that Alex has agreed to take on this new responsibility,” says Robert Blouin, PharmD, dean of the School. “He has made major contributions to the School over his two decades here and is internationally recognized for his research in cheminformatics. He has a knack for bringing together scientists with diverse research interests to address important scientific problems. This quality will serve the School very well as he takes on this new role.”

As associate dean, Tropsha will serve as the School’s chief research officer. He will create and execute strategies to increase support for the research enterprise, oversee the School’s research centers, and work to cultivate and expand partnerships with entities within the University and with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He is assuming the post currently held by Rudy Juliano, PhD, who will be entering phased retirement on July 1. Tropsha and Juliano will work together during the month of June to assure a smooth transition, Blouin says.

Tropsha has been the chair of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products since 2005. He is succeeded by Lawrence who will serve as the division’s chief administrative and academic officer and focus on the recruitment and retention of faculty and staff, mentoring of junior faculty, budget management, and the division’s contributions to the graduate and professional education programs.

“David is a leading authority in using chemical biology to sense, inhibit, and activate cell signaling pathways. He has proven to be a thought leader in research and an extraordinary teacher in the classroom,” Dean Blouin says. “I believe he is the ideal scientist to lead a research-intensive division that has a broad mission that also includes teaching and service.”

Alexander Tropsha

As an expert in the fields of computational chemistry, cheminformatics, and structural bioinformatics, Tropsha has authored more than 125 peer-reviewed papers and twenty books and book chapters. He joined the School’s faculty in 1991 as an assistant professor and director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling. He was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and to full professor in 2004 and holds appointments as an adjunct professor in the UNC Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the Department of Computer Science and is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was named as the  K. H. Lee Distinguished Professor in 2008.

Tropsha earned his PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology and MS in chemistry from Moscow State University.

David Lawrence

In his research, Lawrence works to understand the biochemical processes of the cell by studying them as they happen in the cell as opposed to studying them in vitro. He currently focuses on applying his discoveries to cancer detection and treatment and, to a more limited extent, diseases of the developing world. Lawrence is a Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor.

Before joining the School in 2007, Lawrence spent eleven years as a professor of biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York. Before that, he was at the State University of New York at Buffalo for ten years. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Pharmacology and is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Lawrence received his PhD in chemistry from the University of California at Los Angeles and his BS in biological sciences from the University of California at Irvine.

Persky, a clinical associate professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, has been the center’s associate director. As director, he will continue to work with various people and committees at the School to help faculty members become more effective teachers and mentors by identifying innovative teaching practices and advocating for their integration into the curriculum.

“Adam is a terrific teacher with a passion for the craft who never stops looking for new, innovative ways to engage students and help them become life-long learners,” says Russ Mumper, PhD, vice dean of the School. “Those attributes, combined with the fact that he has played a key role in the Center for Educational Excellence in Pharmacy since its creation, make him an excellent choice for this position.”

Persky came to the School as a postdoctoral fellow in 2002 and became a member of the faculty in 2004. He was named Teacher of the Year by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in 2008 and 2009 and is one the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s three ACC Teaching Scholars. He also received honorable mention for the AACP Innovative Teaching Award in 2007 and has received a number of annual teaching awards that are voted on by students at the School.

Persky has been invited to present on teaching and learning at venues such as the closing plenary session of the 2010 Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching, at Duke University, at the South Carolina College of Pharmacy’s 2010 faculty retreat, at a special session at the 2009 national meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, and at the 2009 national meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.

The center was created in March 2008 as part of the School’s plan to transform the educational process to better prepare professional and graduate students for entering their professions and continuing to develop throughout their careers.

The American Pharmacists Association has named Stefanie Ferreri, PharmD, as the 2011 recipient of the Community Pharmacy Residency Excellence in Precepting Award. Ferreri was selected in recognition of her leadership as a preceptor and mentor and her dedication to the advancement of community pharmacy practice.

Established in 2003, APhA Community Pharmacy Residency Excellence in Precepting Award recognizes a community pharmacy residency director or preceptor who has demonstrated excellence in precepting, mentoring, leadership, and community pharmacy residency program administration. Ferreri will be officially recognized at the APhA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Seattle March 25-28.

A previous resident of Ferreri’s praised her in a nomination letter: “Stefanie exudes passion and dedication in every detail of her teaching and mentoring work. Her leadership extends well beyond the doors of UNC and its residency program into the community where she advocates for our profession on a local, state, and national level. She emphasizes service to the profession through her ideals, dedication, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit. She is truly the embodiment of a community pharmacy leader.”

Another former resident commented, “Stefanie is a pioneer in the area of community pharmacy practice and has built her career—and shaped those of numerous others—on what she believes community pharmacists should become, rather than on what is accepted or even thought possible for community practitioners. Throughout her career, Stefanie has served her community, state and nation with a commitment that comes only from passion for her profession. She is equally committed to ensuring the growth and, development and success of the individual residents and preceptors in her program. Stefanie strives to inspire students to reach for goals that may seem impossible to most, but to her, are just waiting to be attained.”

Ferreri is a clinical associate professor and the director of the Community Pharmacy Residency Program in the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education. She has an interest in advancing clinical practice in community pharmacy settings, particularly in the areas of immunization, diabetes and medication therapy management. She is an active member several pharmacy associations including the Nonprescription Medication Academy, AACP, ACCP and NCAP.

Ferreri received her BS in pharmacy from the University of Connecticut and her PharmD from Campbell University. She completed a PGY1 hospital residency at the University of Connecticut Health Care Center and her PGY1 community residency with Ward Drug in Nashville, North Carolina. She is a fellow of APhA and a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE).

Xiao, the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor of Gene Therapy, joined the division in 2006. His research focuses on gene delivery and therapy for various genetic and acquired diseases. His research on muscular dystrophy, especially Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, has received international recognition, and his groundbreaking work has been developed into the first gene therapy phase I clinical trial for DMD in the United States.

In addition to assisting the division chair with the operation and administration of the division, Xiao’s primary duty will be to direct and lead research and graduate education within MOPH.

“We chose Xiao for this role because he is an excellent scientist with good leadership quality,” says division chair Leaf Huang, PhD, also a Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor. “We share a common vision of how to further build our division into an outstanding drug-delivery program.”

Before coming to UNC-Chapel Hill, Xiao was a member of the faculty in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Biochemistry and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his PhD in biology. He earned two degrees in China, an MS in biochemistry at Wuhan University and a BS in pharmaceutical chemistry from the Shanghai Medical University School of Pharmacy.

“Federico Innocenti is an internationally regarded expert in cancer pharmacogenomics and known for his formidable ability to translate novel laboratory findings into clinical use,” said Robert Blouin, PharmD, dean of the School. “His blend of clinical training and pharmacology expertise will complement and advance our individualized therapy program.”

Innocenti elucidated the role of the enzyme UGT1A1 in developing toxicity to the anticancer drug irinotecan and then performed clinical studies using patients’ genetic information to redefine the right dose of this commonly used drug.

As the first associate director for oncology research in the Institute of Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy, Innocenti will coordinate the cancer-related pharmacogenetic activities of IPIT and form a multidisciplinary working group to catalyze cancer pharmacogenomics at UNC. Working with other IPIT leaders, Innocenti will be responsible for strategic planning of the cancer pharmacogenomic pipeline of IPIT and leading intervention trials to bring pharmacogenetically guided therapy into the clinic.

“Federico Innocenti comes to UNC with stellar credentials," said Shelley Earp, MD, director of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. "He will work with our clinical oncology teams to understand how a patient’s genetic make-up influences their response to cancer therapy. His recruitment, supported by the University Cancer Research Fund, along with that of IPIT director, Howard McLeod, will put UNC at the forefront of this important clinical area. North Carolina’s patients will benefit. With his and other recruitments, also made possible by the Fund, North Carolina has a nationally recognized program capable of creating new knowledge about how best to make cancer therapies effective for each individual.”

Innocenti comes to UNC from the University of Chicago where he was an associate professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology. His National Institutes of Health-funded research program is currently focused on the discovery of genomic determinants of efficacy and toxicity of cancer chemotherapy. The ultimate goal of Innocenti’s program is the personalization of cancer therapies.

Innocenti serves on numerous committees of clinical trials cooperative groups, professional societies, and the National Cancer Institute. He is on the Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Committee of the national clinical trials cooperative group Cancer and Leukemia Group B and serves as its liaison to the CALGB Genitourinary Committee. He is on the Investigational Drug Steering Committee for the National Cancer Institute and serves as vice chair of the oncology section for the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Innocenti sits on the editorial board of Journal of Clinical Oncology, Pharmacogenetics and Genomics, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, Current Drug Metabolism, and others. He is associate editor for Pharmacogenomics. He has published more than eighty peer-reviewed publications and book chapters in clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenomics and the editor of three books in the field of pharmacogenomics.

Innocenti earned his magna cum laude medical degree from the University of Pisa School of Medicine in Pisa, Italy, and his PhD in pharmacology and toxicology of cancer chemotherapy from the University of Pisa. He graduated from the postgraduate School of Oncology, also at the University of Pisa.

The awards, which carry a $5,000 stipend, recognize outstanding faculty members who make extra efforts to guide, mentor, and lead students or junior faculty members as they make career decisions, embark on research challenges, and enrich their lives through public service, teaching and educational opportunities. Kohn received this year’s award for faculty-to-faculty mentoring, while the award for faculty-to-student mentoring went to Sandra Martin, PhD, associate dean for research in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Kohn joined the School in 1999 and served as chair of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products until 2005. During that time, he recruited five junior faculty members to the division. All five have been promoted and received tenure, and the division has grown to twelve faculty members.

"Hal began by building the unit from the bottom up," wrote Dean Bob Blouin and current division chair Alex Tropsha, who nominated Kohn for the award. "He recruited five junior faculty members in six years and served as their mentor. He carefully monitored their development, guided them when appropriate, but most importantly, he enabled them to grow in the directions they sought. …

"Significantly, the base that Hal created has allowed us to hire senior faculty members that have elevated the national reputation of the group."

Kohn is also director of the School’s Bill and Karen Campbell Faculty Mentoring Program, the first sponsored program of its kind among the nation’s pharmacy schools. The program began in 2006 as an effort to help junior faculty adjust to life at the University and to succeed professionally and personally.

On the research side, Kohn’s lab is credited with discovering lacosamide, an agent in the treatment of epilepsy and diabetic neuropathy.

The Carolina Women’s Leadership Council is a volunteer committee formed during UNC’s Carolina First Campaign, a major fundraising drive that ended in 2007. The council remains engaged with the University, and members have raised more than $260,000 to endow the mentoring awards to support faculty.

Brouwer, a William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor and chair of the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, will use her grant for a project titled "Drug-Drug Interactions in the Liver: Effect of Ritonavir, a Transport Protein Modulator, on the Hepatic Exposure of 99m Technetium-Mebrofenin in Healthy Human Volunteers."

Kohn is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products. His project is titled "A Tale of Two Antiepileptics: Seeking Neurological agents with more diverse structure and function."

The grants are designed to support researchers with the early development of a research idea or to expand an existing study beyond the original scope into promising new directions. The NC TraCS Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill is one of fifty-five medical research institutions working together as a national consortium to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The consortium, funded through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), works to reduce the time it takes for laboratory discoveries to become treatments for patients, to engage communities in clinical research efforts, and to train a new generation of clinical researchers. The CTSA program is led by the National Center for Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health.

"This appointment recognizes the fact that Rowell Daniels serves at the interface between the School and UNC Hospitals in a role that is inclusive of all of our collaborative practice, educational, and research initiatives," says Bob Blouin, dean of the pharmacy school. "As we continue to strengthen our collaborative ties with the hospital, his position becomes more important than ever."

As director of pharmacy, Daniels oversees all inpatient and outpatient pharmacy services including the pharmacy residency programs at UNC Hospitals and Clinics. In his role as associate dean, he is also responsible for the implementation and integration of teaching and service programs between the School and UNC Hospitals and Clinics as well as ensuring congruence and consistency between the missions of both the School and the UNC Hospitals Department of Pharmacy. In this unique role, Daniels oversees pharmacy practice in all UNC hospitals and clinics ensuring compliance with associated laws and regulations.

"Rowell Daniels is a leader in the Partnership for Patient Care, which is an alliance forged between UNC Hospitals and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy," says Sharon Coulter James, senior vice president, professional services at UNC Hospitals. "He is a key player as we seek to improve care for patients at the hospital, expand the services offered by pharmacists, and maintain an innovative experiential teaching model for pharmacy students and residents."

Prior to coming to UNC in 1998, Daniels held various pharmacy management positions at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He holds a master of science in hospital pharmacy administration from the University of Wisconsin and received his doctor of pharmacy from the University of Georgia through the Medical College of Georgia.

Blalock is an associate professor and a behavioral scientist in the area of patient and public health education. She is particularly interested in risk communication and the impact of pharmaceutical care, including patient education and counseling, on patient health outcomes. Her research focuses primarily on the prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis. Her current work includes studies evaluating the impact of community-pharmacy based illness prevention and disease management programs.

“Sue was chosen as vice chair because of her extreme dedication and commitment to the division,” says Betsy Sleath, PhD, the George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor and chair of the division. “She has taken a critical leadership role in mentoring junior faculty and students and in moving the research, teaching, and service missions of the division forward.”

In addition to assisting the division chair with the operation and administration of the division, Blalock’s primary duty will be to direct and lead research and graduate education within DPOP.

Blalock has been a member of the School’s faculty since 2002 and has been with UNC-Chapel Hill since 1982 with the exception of four years spent as an associate professor at the Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at the University of the Pacific from 1998 to 2002. She received her PhD from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill and her master of public health from the University of Michigan, where she also earned her bachelor’s degree.

American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy New Faculty Award program provides start-up funding for new pharmacy faculty’s research programs. As many as fifteen grants of up to $10,000 each will be awarded in the 2010–2011 academic year to individual faculty starting their academic careers at AACP-member colleges and schools of pharmacy in the United States. Lai also receives $1,000 from AACP for required travel to the AACP Annual Meeting and Seminars in San Antonio, Texas, in July.

“This recognition by AACP and NIAID are well deserved,” says Bob Blouin, dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “The approach Sam takes to his research is highly innovative and the research community has recognized its potential to address some very important scientific problems. Sam is a superb young investigator and we are so pleased with his rapid achievements and recognition.”

The AACP grant will support Lai’s efforts to improve nanoparticle coatings in order to make them biologically inert. Current nanoparticles, which can be used to deliver drugs or other therapeutic agents to tumors, are too easily trapped by the lymphatic system and absorbed by white blood cells.

Lai has also been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health totaling $403,181 over two years. He will explore ways of trapping and destroying HIV in the body’s mucous membranes in order to prevent infection. Blocking HIV in the mucous membranes before infection occurs may be critical to effective prevention of HIV, since once infection is established it is impossible to cure the disease, Lai says.

Lai is an assistant professor in the Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics.

Samuel Lai, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, had his project selected as one of sixty-five grants announced by the Gates Foundation in the fifth funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants were provided to scientists in sixteen countries on five continents.

To receive funding, Lai showed in a two-page application how his idea falls outside current scientific paradigms and might lead to significant advances in global health. The initiative is highly competitive, receiving more than 2,400 proposals in this round.

“Fighting viruses after they have reached their targets for infection is like trying to defend a castle by locking the interior doors but leaving the gate open,” Lai said. “We can fend off viruses much better if we could just close the front gate.”

Most infections do not begin in the blood or enter through undamaged skin. Instead, they are transmitted at exposed mucosal surfaces such as the pulmonary, gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts, Lai said. That makes mucus—the slimy and sticky secretions that line mucosal surfaces—the first line of defense against pathogens such as viruses. Despite the importance of mucous membranes in protecting against foreign substances, few people have thought to take advantage of mucus in developing methods to prevent infections, Lai said.

“Even though viruses must penetrate mucus to infect our body, how viruses behave in mucus has often been ignored,” he said. “Perhaps it is because some consider it to be yucky or gross.”

By better understanding how viruses can be trapped in mucus secretions, Lai says he believes it might be possible to develop better methods pf preventing the spread of infections by, for example, developing new microbicides or improving the effectiveness of vaccines.

Finding better ways to block infections is of particular importance because many viral infections, such as HIV and herpes, cannot be cured once established, Lai said. Together with Richard Cone, PhD, a professor of biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, Lai will explore whether it is possible to protect against infections in animals by trapping and immobilizing viruses and other pathogens in the mucus secretions.

The Gates Foundation will initially fund the project for one year for $100,000. If Lai and his team can show progress in the lab, the funding could continue and increase tenfold.

Video: Sam Lai discusses his research

About Grand Challenges Explorations

Grand Challenges Explorations is a five-year, $100 million initiative of the Gates Foundation to promote innovation in global health. The program uses an agile, streamlined grant process – applications are limited to two pages, and preliminary data are not required. Proposals are reviewed and selected by a committee of foundation staff and external experts, and grant decisions are made within approximately three months of the close of the funding round.

The next round of Grand Challenges Explorations will open in March 2011. More information, including grant application instructions and a list of topics for which proposals will be accepted, will be available at www.grandchallenges.org/explorations.