AAPS Student Chapter at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill

LEADERSHIP

Daisy Zhu, president; Manisit Das, vice president; Alice Cheng, secretary; Emily Hua, treasurer 

The AAPS Student Chapter at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC) has been revitalized with a new focus and vision. This year, we continue to practice inclusivity by inviting student membership from all health science disciplines, including School of Pharmacy, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Biomedical Engineering, etc. You can find a melting pot of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, undergraduates, and professional students at each of our events. We aim to enhance the knowledge of students by exposing them to different areas of the pharmaceutical sciences via speaker events, site visits, interactive workshops, and collaborating with other professional student organizations on campus. In the past year, our chapter was awarded the AAPS Student Chapter Award for providing students with exciting opportunities to advance professional development. This year, we are expanding the scope of the events to encourage more participations from a diverse student body.

Past Events highlight

• Jay Strum, CSO of G1 Therapeutics: Speak Event. Jay Strum, Ph.D., was invited to our School to speak to our graduate and professional students about his career development journey from leading an international gene expression department for the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) genomics program to serving as the chief scientific officer of G1 Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the chemotherapeutic development.
  
  
• AAPS and AMCP: RPIF and Xcenda Fellowship Panel. Our annual collaboration event with the UNC Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) student chapter featured three pharmaceutical industry postdoctoral Pharm.D. fellows from the Rutgers Institute for Pharmaceutical Industry Fellowships (RPIF) and a Pharm.D. from Xcenda, LLC. They explained their fellowship programs to pharmacy students, exposing them to topics from clinical development to health policy, market access and health economics and outcomes research.
  
  
• AAPS at the UCB Biosciences Academic Engagement Night. By taking advantage of local connections in the Research Triangle Park, we earned a spot at the annual Union Chimique Belge (UCB) Biosciences Academic Engagement Night, in which graduate, professional, and undergraduate students are invited from local universities to learn about UCB’s therapeutic areas of neurological and inflammatory disease from their top scientific staff.
  
  
• Science Communication Bootcamp. The AAPS graduate and professional students, in collaboration with other student groups, hosted this workshop in January 2019. Jeff Polish, Ph.D., hosted a storytelling workshop to help young scientists pitch their science before diverse audiences.
  
  
• Mock Interview Session by Syneos Health. Representatives from Syneos Health, a clinical studies contract research organization, spoke in February 2019. Following the presentation, participants were able to sign up for individual sessions with recruiters, for résumé reviews and mock interviews. 

Upcoming Events Highlight:

• Coffee & Cookies with Lawrence Lesko. Lawrence J. Lesko, Ph.D., F.C.P., worked nearly 20 years in the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. In March 2019, Dr. Lesko will participate in a career networking event with AAPS student members and other biomedical science graduate students at UNC.
  
  
• Talk Science & Business with John Paderi, Founder of Symic Bio. John Paderi, Ph.D., is the founder and senior research director of Symic Bio (SB). SB is developing a novel class of compounds targeting extracellular matrix and has successfully brought two drugs from concept into clinical trials. In April 2019, he will deliver a talk before student AAPS members at UNC.

Our mission is to advance pharmaceutical sciences, careers, and community by uniting scientists from all phases of pharmaceutical development. To achieve this, our chapter aims to advocate interprofessional development between all health sciences professions through various events that enhance exposure and knowledge of pharmaceutical sciences. Future goals of the chapter are to expand our size and increase participation from student members. We are excited to continue exerting a positive impact on student membership.