PhD Student in Molecular Pharmaceutics Wins Brewington Award

Academic Programs Divisions Grants and Awards PhD Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics Students,

Grayson Mendenhall
October 31, 2012

James Byrne, a PhD student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, is the 2012 recipient of the School’s Kathryne A. Brewington Graduate Student Research Award.

The award is given annually to the top student in the School’s PhD in pharmaceutical sciences program. The winner receives a plaque and a $1,500 research grant that can be used to fund research, travel to another institution to develop new research skills, or attend a national scientific meeting where the student will present his or her dissertation work.

Byrne will use his Brewington grant to support device-efficacy studies in a novel mouse model of pancreatic cancer. He is investigating novel therapeutic systems for oncology under the guidance of Joseph DeSimone, PhD, the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill and the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University.

Byrne earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He entered the PhD program in the School’s Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics in fall 2008 and is pursuing a combined MD/PhD.