Welcome to the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry website at the University of Utah! This department was originally formed as the Department of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1965, one of the two main departments in the Utah College of Pharmacy. At that time, the department included the disciplines of Pharmacy Administration, Hospital Pharmacy, and Pharmaceutics. In 1978, the Department reorganized, changing its focus and name to the Department of Pharmaceutics, transferring both Pharmacy Administration and Hospital Pharmacy to the Department of Pharmacotherapy in the College. Since then, the Department has attained international recognition for excellence in pharmaceutical research and maintains a top-ranked Pharmaceutics graduate training program in the United States.

Past chairs Steve Kern and Jindrich (Henry) Kopecek have lead the department capably and credibly in recent past years. Our program's faculty and graduate student population have expanded, and improvements in curriculum, organization, and department operation were made in response to changing times. The Department is in a strong position to continue the tradition of excellence in research, education, and service that has successfully generated our international reputation. Consider these facts about our department's recent accomplishments:

• Ranks 2nd among all Departments of Pharmaceutics programs for NIH-peer-reviewed biomedical research support.
• Trains 41 graduate students in the Ph.D. degree.
• Boasts four Distinguished Professors.
• Presents over 25 invited lectures at international conferences per year.
• Publishes over 70 peer-reviewed publications per year.
• Has 2 National Academy memberships.
• Has 2 Millennial Pharmaceutical Scientist awards.
• Received several PhRMA and AAPS awards.
• Received several Controlled Release Society & Society for Biomaterials awards.

I re-enter this department as the first endowed chair in the College of Pharmacy. This is indeed an honor and privilege: the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation has made a profound investment in me, my department and the College of Pharmacy. I intend to leverage this opportunity with my new colleagues to continue to build the department around its traditional strengths and integrate our programs into other Utah strengths through thematic partnerships.

The world's largest research machine, our National Institutes of Health, has recently produced a new 'roadmap' governing research directions and priorities at this agency. As the major funding mechanism for extramural research, their mandate is difficult for any biomedically oriented academic program to ignore. In response, the department seeks to advance our research priorities and develop new areas along lines of the NIH's 'translational research' priority. This national strategy attempts to unify and coordinate efforts across basic biomedical science, engineering and allied health science to the benefit of patient care. Alignment along the streamlined spectrum of such translational biomedical research and training is well-suited to our department's traditional research product. Our faculty have active collaborations with many departments throughout the Health Sciences Campus including new and ongoing collaborations with the Department of Bioengineering, Oncological Sciences at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the Departments of Radiology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Pathology, and Anesthesiology, among others. These collaborations will remain a priority, to continue to provide academically rich experiences for our students and to help build integrated, conversant research teams ready to address emerging and long-standing science, engineering and clinical problems in health sciences and therapeutics. Nonetheless, our students must remain grounded in the core fundamentals of physical pharmacy, molecular aspects of therapeutics, mass transport, kinetics and biomedical science and engineering. Fundamental training in pharmaceutical sciences remains essential among all new trends (e.g., nanotechnology) and national strategic funding priorities. Industrial partners interested in our students and research capabilities should continue to benefit from our rigorous training efforts.

Our faculty enjoys generous research grant support (once again over $3 million in 2006) despite national funding woes plaguing other campuses and competing programs. This provides support for our students, research resources, travel to meetings, and department enrichment functions. Significantly, our students receive numerous awards and recognitions for their achievements, and our graduates find academic and industrial professional opportunities upon completion of their degrees. I certainly will monitor this as one important metric for our program's success.

The Utah and Salt Lake Valley environment provides an attractive quality of life with abundant opportunities for outdoor recreation activities (skiing, hiking, kayaking, mountain biking, camping, winter Olympic sports) all within minutes' reach from a clean, safe modern city. We seek to provide our students a balanced environment to grow and develop a mature, complete, comprehensive scientific career. If you are interested in an outstanding opportunity to gain expertise and credibility in drug delivery science in a great place, please consider joining us. Our training program should provide opportunities for you to integrate applications of modern pharmaceutical chemistry with molecular therapeutics, pathophysiology, bioengineering, biological chemistry, molecular biology, and clinical medicine. Pharmaceutics is truly a unique field!

Please take a moment to look through the content of this site for information on our graduate program, familiarize yourself with our people and priorities, and ponder a possible place here for professional training in pharmaceutics with the tremendous advantages that our University and great State of Utah provide. I welcome your interest and your comments!

Best wishes,

David W. Grainger, Ph.D.
Department Chair and Inaugural George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Presidential Endowed Chair in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry