May 30, 2011
Alexander Tropsha, PhD, has been named as the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s new associate dean for research charged with overseeing the School’s research and graduate education programs. David Lawrence, PhD, will replace Tropsha as the new chair of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products.
“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.
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