Celebrating PharmSci 360, awards, AAPS Communities, and many other successes.
By Dale Eric Wurster, Ph.D., FAAPS, President
What an honor it has been serving as AAPS President this past year! The year has flown by and given me so many opportunities to meet members and dedicate my efforts to the continued success of the association.
I assumed the role of president during the first AAPS PharmSci 360, a new meeting designed to allow greater collaboration between chemically- and biologically-focused scientists. We fine-tuned the learning experience based on member feedback, and the response we received from members was overwhelmingly positive.
We have just completed our second AAPS PharmSci 360 meeting, which built on the original. We continued the five scientific tracks, so members could either focus on their field of expertise or gain a wider perspective across scientific fields. I have enjoyed working with dedicated AAPS members in planning the 2019 meeting. It again delivered a rich scientific experience with symposia, posters, keynote speakers, workshops, short courses, and rapid fire presentations, along with career development sessions focused on building and managing teams and developing skills to advance your career. Our exhibiting partners expanded their participation in the meeting with presentations on a variety of topics, tech challenges where they competed for the best presentation of new technologies via application-based case studies, and a software lab where they gave hands-on, interactive demonstrations of their latest software. Our corporate partners also sent employees to the meeting to present posters (more than 40% of posters were authored by industry and exhibitor members) and sponsored travelships and other events, such as the Career Development Center.
AAPS also presented awards under its recently revamped awards program. Among those presented with awards at PharmSci 360 were the following:
- Distinguished Pharmaceutical Scientist Award: Samuel H. Yalkowsky, Ph.D., FAAPS, University of Arizona
- AAPS Distinguished Service Award: Alice Till, Ph.D., M.B.A., FAAPS
- Global Leader Award: Meena Subramanyam, Ph.D., Takeda
- Emerging Leader Award: Juliane Nguyen, Ph.D., Pharm.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
To learn more about these members, look for their profiles in
AAPS Newsmagazine in the coming year. AAPS awards also recognized outstanding manuscripts, best abstracts, and our exceptional student chapters.
I’m pleased to report that, over the past year, the newly formed AAPS Communities have started coming into their own. Members are sharing resources and discussing their science and regulatory developments. For example, the Bioanalytical Community recently had a discussion about the new Food and Drug Administration guidance, Evaluation of Internal Standard Responses during Chromatographic Bioanalysis: Questions and Answers. A member recently posed the following question to the Therapeutic Product Immunogenicity Community, “How important is acid dissociation to the Meso Scale Discovery antidrug antibody (ADA) assay?” The member received helpful input from four other members. The Veterinary Pharmaceutics, Biologics, and Technology Community recently received an inquiry about a reference for excipients approval for animal products. Two colleagues responded. These posts exemplify the knowledge exchange and professional networking AAPS Communities provide. If you have not been active in the AAPS Communities, I urge you to join one or more that relate to your field of work and take advantage of this member resource, which is available globally 24/7.
Throughout the year, I have emphasized the great science AAPS members practice and share. This science comes from members and corporate partners and is shared through our publications, communities, elearning, and meetings around the world. I am proud to be associated with an organization with such a fertile incubator of scientific thought and resources.
Personally, serving as AAPS President has made this a very special year for me. I thank all of the member volunteers, board members, and staff members for their support and hard work to help AAPS advance the capacity of pharmaceutical scientists to develop products and therapies that improve global health. I wish Dr. Joseph Polli all the best as he ably takes over the presidency. I am sure that the association will continue to thrive and grow under his leadership.