Faculty and student scientists met June 13-14 in Amarillo for the School of Pharmacy’s Seventeenth Annual Research Days, an interdisciplinary forum that spotlights the school’s research activities during the past year. In addition, the symposium provides the school’s faculty, postdoctoral fellows, residents and students an opportunity to exchange research ideas and interests and to discuss potential interdisciplinary collaborations between the school’s departments and campuses.

Diana M. Sobieraj, Pharm.D., was the June 13 keynote speaker. Sobieraj, an assistant professor for the University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Pharmacy, serves as a senior investigator and program manager for UConn’s Evidence-based Practice Center, which is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality.

Mark W. Feinberg, M.D., a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was the June 14 keynote speaker. Feinberg also is an affiliated faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and directs a basic science laboratory funded by the National Institutes of Health to investigate mechanisms that lead to the development of cardio metabolic diseases, including coronary artery disease, insulin resistance and myocardial infarction (heart attack).

Distinguished speakers included Guillermo Altenberg, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair for the Department of Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Medicine in Lubbock; Susan Bergeson, Ph.D., associate dean for the TTUHSC Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and an associate professor for the TTUHSC Department of Pharmacology & Neuroscience in Lubbock; Rebecca Hite, Ph.D., from the Texas Tech University College of Education in Lubbock; and Suphat Subongkot, Ph.D., from the Clinical Pharmacy Division-Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Khon Kaen University in Thailand.

The annual Research Days poster competition featured 68 entries prepared by School of Pharmacy students, graduate students and residents in three pharmacy practice categories: Postgraduate Year-One  (PGY-1) Residents, Postgraduate Year-Two (PGY-2) Residents and Pharm.D. Student. Basic Sciences categories included Junior Graduate Students, senior Graduate Students and Post-Doctoral Research Associate.

The top PGY-1 posters were submitted by Julie John, Pharm.D., (Abilene), Kayla Hodges, Pharm.D., (Amarillo) and Haley Runeberg, Pharm.D., (Dallas). PGY-2 winners included Justin Pedigo, Pharm.D., (Lubbock), Ben Dagraedt, Pharm.D., (Lubbock) and Stanley Luc, Pharm.D., (Amarillo). Alex Le from Abilene took top honors in the Pharm.D. Student category.

Basic Sciences winners, all from Amarillo, included junior graduate students Behnam Noorani, Daniela Rolph and Iti Kaushik; senior graduate students Ekram Ahmed Chowdhury, Sharavan Ramachandran, Snehal Raut and Sanaullah Sajib; and post-doctoral research associate Surendra Punganuru. 

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