Research

February brought the pharmacy program’s 2024 Research Day, presented by the Rho Chi Mu Chapter. This year's event featured a Graduate Student Showcase hosted by the associate deans for research and graduate education, networking and visioning breakout sessions, a keynote presentation from Dr. Rick Wagner, and poster sessions. 

“This year’s Research Day was another great opportunity to celebrate the research being done by pharmacy colleagues, community and classmates,” said Dr. Carolyn Fairbanks, associate dean for research.  “For the first time we held a Graduate Student Showcase of short research talks represented students from four graduate programs. We’re grateful for the support the event received, and the tremendous participation.”  

Graduate Student Showcase Presenters

Yutong Liu, "Development of CatSper inhibitors as nonhormonal male contraceptive agents"

Nick Weirath, "Identification of novel ligands for the melanocortin receptors from high throughput mixture-based screening"

Lusi Zhang, "Bridging Discovery and Clinical Application: The PharmD-PhD Pathway in Psychiatric Genomics and Pharmacogenomics Research"

Chenxu Li, "Advancing Therapeutic Avenues for Neurological Diseases: A Focus on Alleviating Oxidative Stress"

Tongzhen Xie, "Elucidating Mechanism of Agmatine via Two-photon Microscopy and In Vivo Pharmacology"

Vrishali Salian, "Molecular mechanisms governing cerebrovascular inflammation in Alzheimer's disease"

Taiwo Aremu, "Key Components for Planning and Developing New Pharmaceutical Enterprise that Produces the COVID-19 Vaccine in Nigeriafor local uptake"

Cindy (Jungeun) Lee, "Professional Identity(ies) of Pharmacy Educators"

This year’s poster presentation winners include:

Twin Cities Campus:

• First Place: Abdelrahman Saqr, Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology; Advisor: Dr. Pamala Jacobson
• Second Place: Yuting Shan, Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology; Advisor: Dr. R. Stephanie Huang
• Third Place:  Nicholas Weirath, Medicinal Chemistry; Advisor: Dr. Carrie Haskell-Luevano
• People's Choice: Jiayi (Bryan) Yan, P2; Advisor: Dr. Jeanine Jarnes
• People's Choice: Rui Shi, Medicinal Chemistry; Advisor: Dr. Gunda Georg

Duluth Campus:

• First place: Alyssa Preheim, Resident, Essentia Health; Advisor: Dr. Stephanie Nixon
• Second place: Greeshma Kumpati, Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Advisor: Dr. Venkatram Mereddy
• Third place: Haley Pajunen, Resident at St. Luke's Hospital; Advisor: Dr. Joy Bittner
• People's Choice: Kate France, P3; Advisor: Dr. Jacob Brown