Dr. Julie Johnson honored with 2023 ASCPT Mentor Award

Julie Johnson, Pharm.D., a distinguished professor in the University of Florida Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine, was presented the 2023 American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, or ASCPT, Mentor Award on March 22, during the organization’s annual meeting in Atlanta.

Julie JohnsonASCPT established the award in 2011, and it recognizes an influential figure in the life of a student or trainee in the field of pharmacology and translational medicine. Johnson is the second UF College of Pharmacy faculty member to win the award, with the late Hartmut Derendorf, Ph.D., receiving the honor in 2018.

Johnson has mentored 26 postdoc fellows and 16 graduate students during her academic career. She has found mentoring young scientists offers some of the greatest joy in academia.

“Over the course of my career, I have come to believe that the most rewarding element for me is serving as a research mentor,” Johnson said. “I believe mentoring has an incredibly amplifying effect, and the ability to have some influence and impact on really talented people at an early stage in their professional career is a gift.”

Johnson has been a member of ASCPT for more than three decades and has contributed to the success of the organization in many ways. She served as president in 2016-17 and has participated in several ASCPT programs, task forces and committees, including the Scientific Program Committee, Membership Committee and Strategic Planning Task Forces. She has been a featured speaker and presenter at ASCPT annual meetings and previously won the organization’s Rawls-Palmer Progress in Medicine Award in 2021 and the Leon I. Goldberg Young Investigator Award in 2004.

Johnson has written more than 330 original research articles, secured over $50 million in research funding and four times was named a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher — an honor reserved for the authors of the top 1% most highly cited papers in the previous decade. She has received numerous awards from universities and national organizations and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2014, one of the nation’s three national academies.