Recent Graduate Awards

Swadley Receives NRSA Fellowship from NIDA

Courtney Swadley, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Audra Stinchcomb, has been awarded a National Research Service Award Fellowship from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Prior to joining the Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate program in 2005, Courtney received a BS degree in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh.

Courtney’s project focuses on studying and optimizing the skin permeation of cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptor agonists and their analogs. CB1 receptor agonists show therapeutic potential in the treatment of numerous medical ailments including pain (e.g. chronic and neuropathic), nausea and vomiting, and substance abuse (e.g. alcoholism and smoking) making them very interesting for drug delivery research.

These compounds are being investigated for transdermal delivery because of this delivery system’s advantages of providing a patient-controlled method of use, potential for controlled release and long term delivery application, and the ability to bypass first-pass and gastric metabolism. CB agonists are generally of large molecular weight and very lipophilic, making them good models for understanding the skin permeation of compounds with similar physicochemical properties for which little information about skin permeation is available. This project is funded by grants from the NIH (F31) and the American Cancer Society.

UK Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Students Selected to Present at AAPS

Mohamed Abdul Hammed, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Chang Guo Zhan, and Xiaowei Dong, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Russ Mumper, have been selected to participate in the 2008 AAPS Graduate Student Symposium in Drug Design and Discovery sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb to be held Tuesday, Nov. 18, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Xiaowei and Mohamed both will receive complimentary registration for the meeting in addition to travel expenses and a commemorative plaque. Selection was made on the basis of those students judged by the committee to have provided the most outstanding contributions in the above fields through their graduate research.

In addition, they will be recognized during the Opening Session of the AAPS Annual Meeting on Sunday, Nov. 16 at the Georgia World Congress Center in the Thomas Murphy Ballroom.

Hollis, Pan, and Strasinger Receive AAPS Section Sponsored Travel Awards

Christin Hollis and Caroline Strasinger received $500 travel awards from the Physical Pharmacy and Biopharmaceutics (PPB) Section of AAPS. The PPB Section will recognize Christin and Caroline at the PPB Section Meeting at 5 p.m. on Monday, November 17, 2008, at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Christin, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Tonglei Li, will present her poster, “Exploring A Surface Energy Model in Understanding Eutectic Formation” on Wednesday, November 19, 2008.

Caroline, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Audra Stinchcomb, will present her poster, “Transdermal Clonidine Delivery via Carbon Nanotube Membranes”, on Tuesday, November 18, 2008.

Yongmei Pan, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Chang Guo Zhan, received a $500 travel award from the Drug Discovery (DDD) Section of AAPS. Yongmei will be recognized at the DDD Section Membership Meeting on Monday, November 17, 2008, at the Georgia World Congress Center. In addition, she will present her poster “Design of high-activity mutants of human butyrylcholinesterase for anti-cocaine medication through free energy perturbation simulations on the transition state of enzymatic hydrolysis of cocaine” on Thursday, November 20, 2008.

AFPE First Year Graduate School Scholarship Awarded to Birket

Susan Birket, Pharm.D., was awarded the 2007 Kappa Epsilon-Pfizer-AFPE-Nellie Wakeman First- Year Graduate School Scholarship. The purpose of the award is to encourage an outstanding pharmacy school graduate to purse an advanced degree in the pharmaceutical sciences.

Birket, a first-year student in the Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics track of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Ph.D program, is originally from McPherson, Kansas. She received her doctor of pharmacy degree in May 2007 from the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy.

Narayanaswami Receives Predoctoral Fellowship

Vidya Narayanaswami, a student in the University of Kentucky Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Program, has received a $21,000 predoctoral fellowship from the Great Rivers Affiliate Research Committee of the American Heart Association. The fellowship is for two years.

Narayanaswami is originally from Mumbai, India, and has a pharmaceutical sciences degree from the University of Mumbai Institute of Chemical Technology. She is in her third year of the pharmaceutical sciences graduate program and her faculty mentor at UK is Linda Dwoskin, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences.

The Great Rivers Affiliate of the American Heart Association serves Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The objective of the predoctoral fellowship is to help students initiate careers in cardiovascular or stroke research by providing research assistance and training. The science focus of the fellowship is research broadly related to cardiovascular function and disease, stroke or to related clinical basic science, bioengineering or biotechnology, and public health problems.

Hollis and Howard Receive NSF/IGERT Fellowship

Christin Hollis and Melissa Howard, students in the UK Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Program, have been awarded NSF/IGERT fellowships.

Hollis, originally from Indonesia, has a chemical engineering degree from UK and Howard is a Louisville, Ky. native and has a biochemistry degree from Asbury College.

The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, supported by the National Science Foundation, is a multidisciplinary doctoral fellowship program for students interested in the science and engineering of bioactive interfaces and devices. Faculty members involved in the IGERT program are from the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical and Materials Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Anatomy and Neurobiology, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, the Center for Biomedical Engineering and the College of Pharmacy. Graduate students participating in the IGERT program receive their Ph.D. in one of these areas while benefiting from a host of multidisciplinary education and research activities in bioactive interfaces and devices.