The University of Florida College of Pharmacy welcomed 33 new graduate students to campus on Aug. 19. The 2025 cohort comprises 31 Ph.D. students and two on-campus master’s students who hail from 11 countries around the world. Among the new graduate students, 25 will make their home in Gainesville, while eight will attend the Orlando campus.
Peter Swaan, Ph.D., M.Pharm., dean and professor in the UF College of Pharmacy, and several college leaders were on hand to welcome the students on their first day of orientation, when they learned about topics such as graduate student support and student organizations, in addition to meeting with current students in the program.
For Ashley Washington, one of 12 students beginning their training in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, attending a review session for a preliminary exam that she will take a couple years into her training filled her with a sense of eager anticipation for all the material she’ll soon absorb.
“It was a bit intimidating just listening to them talk about the topics, but it also made me feel excited to begin that journey of becoming the person who is proficient in explaining these things,” Washington said. “I can’t wait to learn how to use statistical tools to prevent disease and measure outcomes, increasing safety for people who have to take certain medications, like anti-microbial agents.”
Washington will be studying pharmacoepidemiology and safety sciences. She’s long nurtured a fascination for microbiology, infection control and abnormally resistant bacteria, and while working as a clinical laboratory technologist in microbiology, she began looking for a way to combine all her interests into one satisfying career. She scoured the internet for programs combining epidemiology with prevention and safety science until one promising option surfaced.
“When I found the program here at UF in pharmacoepidemiology, and then I saw that there’s an infectious disease epidemiologist on their list of advisors, I thought, this is the perfect program for me,” Washington said.
2025 Graduate Student Cohort Statistics
