ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE powering the future of pharmacy

Artificial intelligence is more than just the next wave of high tech. It is transforming nearly every sector of our life and the economy, including health care. In the UF College of Pharmacy, researchers are using AI tools to address the nation’s health care challenges from developing new cancer drugs to stemming the opioid epidemic. AI is more than a big idea — it’s changing the way we think about pharmacy and allowing us to answer big questions to improve health outcomes and patient care.

building an ai-powered future

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

AI's Far-Reaching Impact

Anchored by a top 5 national ranking and the fastest supercomputer in higher education, the University of Florida College of Pharmacy is powering the future of pharmacy using artificial intelligence. By integrating AI into the pharmacy curriculum, we are training the next generation of pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists to leverage AI in the workforce.

US News Ranking (AI)

AI Experts IN THE UF COLLEGE OF PHARMACY

$5 million UF College of Pharmacy researchers have secured nearly $5 million in AI-related grant funding in the past 12 months.

7 federal grants Multiple federal health agencies are funding AI research grants in the college.

Pharmacotherapy and translational research

Julio Duarte, Pharm.D., Ph.D.

Duarte is using AI to develop novel methods to identify patients most likely to benefit from preemptive pharmacogenetic testing. Effective targeting of preemptive testing should improve personalization of medication prescribing by assuring genetic information is available to prescribers before a prescription is written.

Julio Duarte

Pharmacotherapy and translational research

Yan Gong, Ph.D.

Gong collaborates with multiple UF faculty in applying AI tools to her pharmacogenomics and precision medicine research. AI technology is assisting her research team in improving the model performance of multiple data sets that are used to advance the clinical implementation of precision medicine.

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Pharmaceutical outcomes and policy

Jingchuan “Serena” Guo, M.D., Ph.D.

By using real-world data and AI/machine learning approaches, Guo is developing novel methods to improve health care and health equity by addressing multifaceted social determinants of health. In addition, she leverages causal and counterfactual AI predictions to identify heterogeneity in treatment effects and signals of drug repurposing. Furthermore, She is evaluating fairness and bias of AI applications and exploring new approaches to mitigate the identified bias.

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Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy

Tianze Jiao, Ph.D.

Jiao’s research focuses on investigation of precision medicine that is both applicable for specific diseases and affordable, through the use of advanced study design (i.e. adaptive treatment strategy), cutting-edge statistical methods, and machine learning approaches adopting longitudinal Big Data. As a pharmacoepidemiologist, he has experience in multiple therapeutic areas with a focus on cardiology and pulmonology.

Jiao, Tianze

Pharmaceutics

Sarah Kim, Ph.D.

Kim envisions developing AI-assisted imaging analysis and informatics tools that will accelerate the analysis of imaging data and provide insights into better understanding of disease progression. Ultimately, the AI-based tools will help in the rational design of disease prevention and treatment strategies. She is currently focusing on optimizing clinical trial designs for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and type 1 diabetes with other UF investigators.

Sarah Kim

MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY

Chenglong Li, Ph.D.

Li is using computing AI approaches combined with lab experiments to advance the drug discovery process. AI technology is assisting his lab in building a computational small molecule drug design platform to optimize newly developed hit compounds. These compounds could one day lead to new drug therapies to treat pancreatic, lung, colon and breast cancer.

Chenglong Li

Medicinal Chemistry

Yanjun Li, Ph.D.

Yanjun Li’s research interests span the fields of deep learning, drug discovery, and precision medicine, with a particular emphasis on AI-driven drug discovery. His work aims to develop innovative AI algorithms to tackle foundational life science challenges with broad scientific impacts and to optimize and automate real-world drug discovery and design pipelines.

Yanjun Li

PHARMACEUTICAL OUTCOMES AND POLICY

Weihsuan “Jenny” Lo-Ciganic, Ph.D., M.S., M.S. Pharm.

Lo-Ciganic’s research uses innovative AI approaches to addresses critical public health problems by developing, refining and validating prediction algorithms that will identify individuals most at risk of unsafe medication use and adverse outcomes. She is one of a select group of pharmacoepidemiologists in the United States to incorporate pharmacoepidemiology and innovative data science research aimed at addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic.

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Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy

Md Mahmudul Hasan, Ph.D.

Hasan conducts data-driven interdisciplinary research to address complex challenges in public health, contributing to healthcare decision-making, policy, and management. His primary research interests include developing fair, trustworthy and equitable AI-driven and evidence-based Clinical Decision Support Systems to help predict adverse health outcomes; and prescriptive decision analytic models to improve medication adherence and effectiveness of personalized interventions to better manage the chronic health conditions.

Md Mahmudul Hasan

PHARMACOTHERAPY AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Caitrin McDonough, Ph.D.

McDonough is adopting new AI strategies into her data analysis to characterize and predict cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular drug response. Machine learning and AI tools are helping her integrate data from multiple sources and go beyond traditional statistical models in predicting cardiovascular events.

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PHARMACOTHERAPY AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Khoa Nguyen, Pharm.D.

With expertise in pharmacy informatics and pharmacogenomics, Nguyen helps develop clinical decision support tools for UF Health’s electronic medical record system. He envisions using AI technology to develop and implement user-centered health information technology into the medical record system, which will help predict and prevent severe adverse drug reactions in patients.

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Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy

Masoud Rouhizadeh, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.A.

Rouhizadeh develops machine learning and natural language processing methods with applications to clinical and pharmaceutical outcomes and public health, focusing on three major goals: (a) identifying signs, symptoms, diseases, disorders, and medications from unstructured electronic health records, (b) detecting signals of neurological disorders affecting children and the elderly, and (c) computational models for identifying social and behavioral determinants of health.

Masoud Rouhizadeh

MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY

Gustavo Seabra, Ph.D.

Seabra is developing, in collaboration with Dr. Chenglong Li, applications that teach AIs to autonomously design, screen and optimize molecules that attack selected disease targets. The process can speed up the drug discovery process by suggesting molecules to be synthesized and tested with improved chances for success.

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Pharmaceuitcal Outcomes and Policy

Steven Smith, Pharm.D., M.P.H.

Smith uses prediction modeling, including machine learning techniques, to develop improved methods for selecting antihypertensive treatments in patients with chronically high blood pressure. He is also applying similar techniques to improve the value of electronic health record databases in medical research by developing models that differentiate between patients with high and low degrees of data missingness.

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Pharmacodynamics

Brandon Warren, Ph.D.

Warren integrates AI and machine learning to assess the role neuronal ensembles in drug self-administration. His team applies these technologies to quantifies neuronal activity patterns and associates these measurements with rodent drug-seeking behavior. The incorporation of AI into their research accelerates discoveries and generates novel insights into the dynamics of neural networks in substance use behaviors.

Brandon Warren

Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy

Almut Winterstein, R.Ph., Ph.D.

Winterstein’s research concentrates on the evaluation of drug safety and effectiveness in real-world populations with a specific focus on child and maternal health and pediatrics. She employs AI methods to optimize measurement of variables in large health care databases and to develop prediction models for adverse drug effects. Examples of recent work include machine learning-based imputation methods to predict pregnancy onset for the evaluation of teratogenic drug effects and prediction of drug-induced hypoglycemia in hospitalized patients.

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AI Research across the entire life cycle of a drug

AI wheel

Endless opportunities in AI

Artificial intelligence is enabling faculty across the UF College of Pharmacy’s five departments to accelerate and advance research and clinical care in the pharmaceutical sciences and practice. AI is transforming the way we approach drug discovery, design clinical trials, recommend more personalized treatments and make medications safer. With support from HiPerGator 3.0 — the fastest AI supercomputer in higher education — and national claims data for more than 350 million lives available at the UF College of Pharmacy, we are well equipped with the tools and technology to explore endless opportunities in advancing AI research and practice.

Funding Agencies

Multiple national funding agencies are supporting AI-related research in the UF College of Pharmacy, including :

  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse
  • National Institute on Mental Health
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
  • Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
  • PhRMA Foundation
AI in health care

Advancing AI in the health sciences

Artificial Intelligence Faculty Job Openings

The academic colleges of UF Health are recruiting faculty who can harness artificial intelligence to improve health and health equity, while training students to lead tomorrow's AI workforce.

Malachowsky hall for Data science & information technology

OPENED FALL 2023

Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology

In the fall of 2023, artificial intelligence and data science researchers from the UF Colleges of Pharmacy, Medicine and Engineering moved into the new state-of-the-art Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology. The 263,000-square-foot building is located in the heart of UF's main campus and connect students and researchers from across disciplines by creating an interdisciplinary hub for advances in computing, communication and cyber-technologies.

Malachowsky Hall

Location

Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology is located in the heart of UF’s Gainesville campus across the street from the J. Wayne Reitz Union.

Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology

Collaboration

The building’s design promotes collaboration amongst faculty, staff and students from the Colleges of Pharmacy, Medicine and Engineering.

Data Science Building

State-of-the-Art

With more than 260,000 square feet, Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology sets a new standard for data science buildings across the country.

Data Science Building

Pharmacy’s New Home

The College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, Center for Drug Evaluation and Safety and the Consortium for Medical Marijuana Clinical Outcomes Research occupy the sixth floor, along with other computational researchers in the college.

Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology