Department of Pharmacology

Richard Wojcikiewicz, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of
Pharmacology

Pharmacology is the science of of how drugs act and are developed. It is central to the translation of basic research into medicines.

The Pharmacology Department faculty and staff serve the dual Institutional missions of research and education.

Our research programs emphasize mammalian systems and translation to the clinic. Specific focus areas are molecular pharmacology, drug development and delivery, nanomedicine, cardiovascular science, cancer biology and therapeutics, epilepsy, metabolic disease, wound healing, sepsis, immunotherapy and cell signaling (for details, see individual Faculty members' webpages under the Research or Faculty and Staff tabs). These programs are strongly supported by extramural funding, primarily from NIH and DoD. Collaborations with other Departments are encouraged and promoted. Notably, Dr Juntao Luo has helped establish SIRC—the Sepsis Interdisciplinary Research Center—to develop novel, nanotechnology-based therapeutics to target sepsis (See articles about the SIRC website, and about Dr Luo here and here).

In recent years, a priority has been the recruitment of talented faculty conducting high quality research to advance and perpetuate the Department's legacy of excellence. In 2019 Dr David Auerbach (cardiovascular, epilepsy) and Dr Nori Urao (wound healing, metabolic diseases) were recruited (please visit the podcast and grant announcements here and here regarding Dr Auerbach, and also the feature on Dr Urao). Dr Yamin Li (lipid nanoparticles, drug delivery) joined the Department in 2022, and in 2024, Dr Nathan Tucker (cardiac genomics) and Dr Sarea Wang (cardiac regeneration) were recruited.

The delivery of high-quality education in Pharmacology to both Medical and Graduate students is also a priority. A thread leader manages the teaching of Pharmacology to medical students, including the recruitment of teaching faculty from the Pharmacology Department as well as Clinical Departments. Graduate students receive high quality classroom and laboratory instruction in preparation for successful careers in academic research and/or industry. Click on the links below for examples of recent first-author publications from our current graduate students.