HSC College of Pharmacy’s research ranking rose to No. 36 in the U.S.
Increased grant funding at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, College of Pharmacy helped push its institutional total research ranking up from No. 54 in the nation to No. 36, according to a listing published by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).
The College’s total funded research grants reached more than $6.8 million in fiscal year 2020, according to AACP’s rankings. Despite the pandemic, the College of Pharmacy faculty more than doubled research grant funding and continued to make strong scientific contributions, advancing science and practice through scholarly activity and research.
“Productivity has never been higher in our young college,” said S. Suresh Madhavan, MBA, PhD, FAPhA, Dean of the College of Pharmacy. “Our outstanding faculty pressed forward during this challenging year and reached new heights in funding and publishing, reinforcing their extraordinary passion for their work and dedication to a collaborative culture. This speaks to our resilience and dedication as a college to bring innovative new treatments to the market and improve the health outcomes of the patients we serve.”
“Based on our own analysis of the rankings, it’s great to see we moved up among the ten pharmacy schools in Texas with only two schools ranked higher than HSC,” said Dr. Madhavan.
The institution matriculated its first Doctor of Pharmacy class in 2013. Earlier this year, the college graduated its fifth cohort of PharmD students.
“This is a fantastic accomplishment in a very competitive environment by our College of Pharmacy,” said Dr. Charles Taylor, Provost and Executive Vice President at HSC. “Research funding is vital to the success of our Institution as it allows us to support innovative research while fulfilling our mission of “creating solutions for a healthier community.”
Areas of research and innovation in the college include drug discovery and development research that includes efforts aimed at the identification and validation of new drug targets, discovery, and optimization of novel drug leads, and development of new drug formulation and delivery approaches.
The college also has a successful Preclinical Research Services operation that helps bring new drugs to the market through contract research partnerships with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.
College faculty are also involved in developing and evaluating innovative practice and teaching and learning models. Their work includes assessing health care systems and patient outcomes of various treatments and health services delivery.
“The growth rate in research funding and productivity in the HSC College of Pharmacy is nothing short of remarkable, especially since it comes in the midst of a pandemic,” said Dr. Brian A. Gladue, HSC Vice President for Research and Innovation. “It will immediately and definitely enhance provider training and discovery. More important is the immense positive impact this will have on the future health of our community.”
Dean Madhavan said this achievement was a team effort.
“Such an accomplishment is only possible when there is great support and leadership by our chairs and associate deans to help our talented faculty be successful,” Madhavan said.
The AACP collected data from November to January from Colleges of Pharmacy based on information submitted by 115 colleges, and the annual listing includes aggregated grant data by institution for National Institutes of Health (NIH), other federal, total federal, non-federal and a sum of all extramural research grants.
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