The AAPS UIC Student Chapter

(Aiming as High as the Sears Tower!!!)

The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) - University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) student chapter, like any other AAPS student chapters, provides a platform for bridging the professional and social interactions between students and faculty/Industrial scientists. Established in the beautiful city of Chicago during the year 2002 with a modest 50 student members, the AAPS-UIC student chapter currently boasts over 128 registered members from various disciplines: Medicinal chemistry and Pharmacognosy, Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Biology, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Bioengineering, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, etc.  The AAPS-UIC student chapter is currently chaired by Boobalan Pachaiyappan (pursuing PhD in Medicinal Chemistry).  The other members of the executive committee include: Dirim Arslan (Chair-elect), Bethany White (Vice-chair), He (Kelvin) Bai (Secretary) and Jeff Dahl (Treasurer).  The student chapter is currently advised by Dr. Richard Gemeinhart (Associate Professor, Biopharmaceutical Sciences).

Since January 2005 where we last featured in the Graduate Focus, we constantly grew over time maintaining our exceptional standards in continuously educating the student members through various educational programs, industrial visits, campus outreach, etc. in synchrony with the AAPS vision, mission and values. Our student chapter members have participated in various local, regional and national meetings/conferences in the field of pharmaceutical sciences and related disciplines, and have received numerous awards during the last four years. To briefly name a few: Bethany white - 1st Prize in poster presentation at Pharmaceutics Graduate Student Research Meeting (PGSRM) at Purdue, (2009); Ying He - 3rd Prize in poster presentation PGSRM (2009); Sok Bee Lim and Deepali Vartak – 3rd Prize in Poster presentation at Controlled Release Society (CRS) symposium at UIC, Chicago (2009); Dirim Arslan, Misuk Bae, Sok Bee Lim (College of Pharmacy, Graduate student award recipients); Dirim Arslan, Sungpil Cho,  Sok Bee Lim and Misuk Bae (UIC travel awards); Boobalan Pachaiyappan – Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) Outstanding Young Investigator award (2008 & 2009), Oral presentation at American Chemical Society meeting at Philadelphia (2008); Emma Mendonca  - ADDF Outstanding Young Investigator award (2009), etc.

In an effort to keep abreast our student members about the latest advances in drug discovery as well as to provide a forum for the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the AAPS-UIC student chapter organized various seminars by inviting experts in the corresponding fields. A succinct overview - ‘Anti-bacterial Drug Discovery: Advances in the Target-based Approach’ by Dr. Wright Nichols, Director of Microbiology, AstraZeneca R&D, Boston (2006); ‘Tablet manufacturing seminar’ by Mr. Edward Novitt, Product manager, Table coating Systems, Thomas Engineering (2007); ‘Use of Lean Practices to Accelerate Biomarker Assay Development’ by Dr. Russell Weiner, Director of Clinical Biomarkers and Bioanalytical Sciences at Bristol-Myers Squibb (2008); ‘Drug Discovery: Ingenuity or Serendipity’ by Dr. Richard Silverman, Professor of Chemistry, Northwestern University (2009). Students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty members from various disciplines took advantage of all these lectures thereby paying off the strenuous tasks undertook by the executive committee.

Graduating from school without any job is no fun and our student chapter is fully aware of this. To circumvent this shortcoming as well as to increase the career-related awareness, our chapter constantly organized various events/workshops. To highlight the key ones: ‘Industrial visit to Eli Lilly’ (2006); A seminar entitled ‘Strategies to successfully finish your master’s thesis or PhD dissertation’ by Dr. Alison Miller (2007); Industrial visit to Abbott Pharmaceuticals (2008 and 2009). To emphasize more on the industrial visit - over 25 students took advantage each year and felt highly privileged to attend the lectures delivered by expert industrial Scientists from various fields, to visit the tablet manufacturing and processing lab, to receive resume writing tips, to enhance their networking skills, etc.

As much as we work hard in order to stay in the Graduate program, recreation is something any student would never compromise. Our chapter organized various active recreational events to help socialize students from various departments. To briefly name a few: movie screening night (2006), a night of Monte Carlo simulations (2007), Oktoberfest (2008), etc. Lots of graduate students took some time off from their busy schedule to attend these events in order to make it a huge success! The upcoming events in this category include: a trip to Montrose beach (late July, 2009) and ice-cream social (late September, 2009).

As the chapter is continuously growing every day, and our aims set as high as the Sears Tower, the executive committee works hard to deliver the best in order to fulfill the vision, mission and values of AAPS.

Special section

Feedback from Students:

What they said about …..

Oktoberfest (2008):

•I think this Oktoberfest is just awesome. I got a fantastic chance to mingle with students from other departments. The scary movie is a good choice. Also, thanks for the food. (Sudakar Kadari, Medicinal Chemistry)

•I’m glad I came to this event. It’s been so long I watched a scary movie in a room full of people and I thank AAPS-UIC Student chapter for organizing this. This is a nice break from my normal lab chores. (Subash Velaparthi, Medicinal Chemistry)

Dr. Silverman’s seminar on ‘Drug discovery: Ingenuity or Serendipity’ (2009)

•Dr. Silverman is truly terrific. He mesmerized the audience with his unique lecturing style by presenting case studies of popular drugs. (Brain Wright, Pharmacognosy)

•The talk was a nice blend of drug discovery concepts for both experts and non-experts.  Now I know how Viagra works!!! (Raghupathi Neelarapu, Medicinal Chemistry)

•It is astonishing to know that over a billion dollars were spent including 15 years of research in order to release a drug in the market. It is also surprising to see how serendipity played a huge role in drug discovery field. I sincerely thank Dr. Silverman for this wonderful lecture. (Daniela, Chemistry).

Industrial visit - Abbott trip (2009):

•This trip created a nice opportunity to build networking with Abbott. (Jing Ming)

•Thanks for organizing the visit – I did have a great time and overall it was very informative. (Emily Vandenbroucke)

•I liked all the presentations – they were very informative and not too long. I especially liked the drug discovery and development presentations. Thank you for organizing this trip. (Aaron Place, Pharmacology)

•I think the trip was great, the talks were really interesting. (Natalia)

•Thanks a lot for organizing the trip. It did educate me a lot including how to write a resume. Now I know what to put and what not to put in the resume. (Emma Mendonca, Bioengineering)

•I think the visit was a pleasant one. Everything was great. A part of me wished to see the very inside of Abbott research labs. (Evelyn)

•Thanks for organizing the industry visit. I definitely learned a lot about pharmaceutical development and I would recommend this trip to others in the future. (Vanessa Meyer)

1. •I thought it was a great trip. The lectures were truly inspiring. (Kristine Ansenberger).
   

Photo-1: AAPS-UIC Student chapter members

(left to right) Front row: Emma mendonca, Melanie Kollmer, Amrita Banerjee, Aditya Vaidya, Brian White, Michael Vanni, Subasish Tapadar, Maitrayee Bose, Boobalan Pachaiyappan (Chair), Dirim Arslan (Chair-elect), Samer Abdul-Hay. Back row: Hazem Abdul-Karim, Stephanie Drake, Dr. Richard Gemeinhart (faculty advisor), S. Anand, Jeff Dahl (Treasurer), Jay Kalin, and Jerry White.

Photo-2: AAPS-UIC Student chapter members with the seminar speaker Dr. Richard Silverman (Professor, Northwestern University)

(left to right) Dirim Arslan (Chair-elect), Dr. Richard Silverman (speaker), Boobalan Pachaiyappan (Chair), Brian White and Jeff Dahl (Treasurer)

Photo-3: Getting ready for Abbott trip

Dirim Arslan (left; Chair-elect) and Boobalan Pachaiyappan (right; Chair)