Joga Gobburu, Ph.D., M.B.A., a professor and director of the Center for Translational Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, visited the University of Florida College of Pharmacy April 8 to give a presentation as part of the Dr. Nicholas Bodor Distinguished Lectureship Series.
Gobburu’s lecture, titled “Transforming Clinical Pharmacology into a Strategic Discipline,” featured candid and curious dialogue with UF pharmacy students, faculty and staff, who were presented with thought-provoking questions and strategies meant to push the field of clinical pharmacology forward.
“Do the decisions we support lead to an impact beyond ourselves? That is empowerment,” Gobburu said during his hour-long talk.
Before he joined the University of Maryland, Gobburu held various positions at the Food and Drug Administration between 1999 and 2011. Under his leadership, the FDA formed its division of pharmacometrics and a pharmacometrics fellowship program. A globally recognized leader in quantitative disease models and their application to decisions, Gobburu is driven by a commitment to transforming the field of pharmacometrics into a decision-supporting science. Among his many awards and accolades, Gobburu is a recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the American Conference on Pharmacometrics, the Tanabe’s Young Investigator Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacology, the Sheiner-Beal Pharmacometrics Award from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the Sheiner Lecture Award from the International Society of Pharmacometrics.
The lectureship series is named in honor of Nicholas Bodor, Ph.D., graduate research professor emeritus at the UF College of Pharmacy and former chair of the department of medicinal chemistry. As founder and CEO of Miami’s Bodor Laboratories, Bodor has garnered international recognition as a leader in drug discovery, design and delivery. He helped establish the Nicholas Bodor Professorship in Drug Discovery in 2007, and UF named the lectureship series in his honor in 2019. Held each spring, the lectureship series brings world-renowned scientists to the UF College of Pharmacy to share their expertise and discoveries with faculty, trainees and students.