College of Pharmacy graduate students Ghadeer Dawwas and Mohamed Solayman collected two of the top three places at the 2015 UF Graduate Student Research Day poster competition on Oct. 27. Dawwas’ poster titled, “Modifiable Risk Factors of Type II Diabetes: Analysis at the State Level in the United States,” took home top honors among more than 200 UF graduate students across the entire university. Solayman’s poster titled, “Association of plasma micro-RNA with antihypertensive response to beta blockers,” placed third in the competition.
Dawwas, a third year graduate student in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, works under the supervision of Haesuk Park, Ph.D, assistant professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy. Before joining UF in 2013, she received her pharmacy degree from the University of Jordan and a master of business administration from Stratford University in Virginia. Her research interests focus on patients with type II diabetes, with special emphasis on the comperative effectiveness and cardiovascular safety of diabetes therapy.
Solayman, a fourth-year graduate student in the department of pharmacotherapy and translational research, is supervised by Julie Johnson, Pharm.D., dean and distinguished professor of the College of Pharmacy. His research interest focuses on hypertension in pharmacogenetics and trying to find genetic determinants of beta-blocker antihypertensive drug response by investigating microRNA and DNA methylation.