Department of Pharmaceutics Welcomes New Faculty Member, Ameya Kirtane

Assistant professor Ameya Kirtane, PhD, has joined the College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutics.

Kirtane is a 2015 graduate of the department’s graduate program under the mentorship of Dr. Jayanth Panyam. He carried out his postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently an instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kirtane’s  work focuses on designing materials, formulations, and devices for drug delivery, with applications in cancer and infectious diseases. Specifically, he has designed polymeric nano- and microparticle formulations that enable targeted and local delivery of small molecules to solid tumors. More recently, he studied high-throughput material synthesis and testing, as well as machine learning approaches to aid the identification of potent mRNA vectors. Finally, he has led the development of ingestible devices for the long-term delivery of small molecules and mRNA vaccines via the oral route, some of which have been tested in the clinic. 

“I am delighted to launch my independent academic career in the pharmaceutics department,” said Kirtane. “The pharmaceutics department and the College of Pharmacy have been leaders in research and have an extensive record of training excellent scientists. The University of Minnesota is home to a community of welcoming and collaborative scientists who have led some exciting research. I am deeply honored to contribute to this legacy.”

Dr. Kirtane will be a welcome addition to the faculty members in the Department of Pharmaceutics, where he’ll be able to build on his work in order to engineer platform technologies with wide application.

“We are delighted with the arrival of Dr. Kirtane,” said Raj Suryanarayanan, head of the Department of Pharmaceutics. I am confident that his research will take the department in new directions and to new heights. I am also looking forward to his contributions to the teaching and service missions of the department.”