Peter W. Swaan, Ph.D., M.Pharm., dean and professor of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, has been named president-elect of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, or AAPS, a leading international organization for pharmaceutical scientists.
Swaan will be sworn in as president-elect in October during PharmSci 360, the annual meeting of the AAPS in New Orleans. He will serve a one-year term before becoming president of AAPS in fall 2027.
“AAPS has been an important part of my professional journey, providing opportunities to learn, grow, collaborate and build lasting relationships across the pharmaceutical sciences,” Swaan said. “I am deeply grateful for the role this organization has played in my career, and I am honored to have the opportunity to give back by serving as president-elect.”
Swaan has been an active member of AAPS and was elected as a Fellow in 2009 in recognition of his contributions to the field. Within the organization, he has served in multiple volunteer leadership roles, including chair of the Oral Absorption Focus Group, section chair for Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, a member of the Annual Meeting Programming Committee and chair of the Abstract Screening Committee. He was also on the AAPS Board of Directors as a member-at-large and served for more than a decade as editor-in-chief of Pharmaceutical Research, the flagship scientific journal of AAPS.
The AAPS election marks the second time in two years that Swaan has been selected by his peers to lead a national pharmacy organization. He currently serves as chair of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy’s Council of Deans, a one-year term that concludes next summer.
“Being entrusted with these leadership roles is both a tremendous honor and a responsibility,” Swaan said. “Academic pharmacy and the pharmaceutical sciences are deeply connected, and I believe we have tremendous opportunities to work together to advance education, research and innovation. I look forward to helping build those connections and ensuring our profession is prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.”
Swaan became the eighth dean of the UF College of Pharmacy in December 2022. He joined UF from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, where he served as the associate dean for research and advanced graduate education as well as a professor and chair in the department of pharmaceutical sciences. While at Maryland, Swaan was named a university distinguished professor in recognition of his extraordinary leadership and significant contributions to the pharmaceutical sciences.
As an internationally recognized scientist, Swaan has built a highly successful research program focused on transporters in drug targeting and delivery. His early research examined ways to make poorly absorbed drugs more effective in the gastrointestinal tract, which led to his lab pioneering the use of computer modeling to determine the structural requirements of membrane transporters. He holds several U.S. patents on these and related technologies and has published more than 150 original research articles. In addition, he was continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for a quarter century and secured more than $25 million in grant funding during his career.
About AAPS
Founded in 1986, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists is a professional, scientific organization of approximately 7,000 individual members and over 10,000 actively participating stakeholders employed in academia, industry, government and other pharmaceutical science-related research institutes worldwide.