OXFORD, Miss. – A National Institutes of Health official will deliver the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy’s Coy W. Waller Distinguished Lecture at 11 a.m. Feb. 24 in the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
Dr. Susan B. Shurin, acting director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at NIH, will address the role of pharmaceutical scientists in health outcomes. The lecture is free and open to the public.
“We are ecstatic that Dr. Shurin will be joining us to celebrate Coy Waller’s legacy to our school and the pharmaceutical industry,” said David D. Allen, dean of the School of Pharmacy. “We look forward to her insights on health outcomes and learning how investigators in the pharmaceutical sciences can impact them.”
Shurin represents the NHLBI on activities across the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services. As part of NIH’s global commitment, she oversees the NHLBI’s Global Health Initiative, which includes a network of collaborating centers of excellence in low- and middle-income countries focused on building sustainable programs to combat chronic cardiovascular and lung diseases.
She joined the NHLBI in 2006 as deputy director, responsible for oversight of the institute’s clinical research portfolio. Before joining the NHLBI, she was professor of pediatrics and oncology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Shurin received her education and medical training at Harvard University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She has served as an editorial reviewer for medical journals and as a member of NIH advisory bodies. Shurin was also active in clinical research while participating in the Children’s Oncology Group and multiple studies in sickle cell disease and homeostasis.
“We are honored to welcome Dr. Shurin as the Waller distinguished lecturer,” said Anthony J. Verlangieri, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, which is hosting this year’s lecture. “It’s a fitting tribute to Dr. Waller to have someone of Dr. Shurin’s caliber deliver this year’s lecture.”
The Coy W. Waller Distinguished Lecture series was established in 2004 to recognize the former Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences director’s contributions to pharmaceutics and to the pharmacy school. Each year a department within the school hosts the lecture, and lecturers are selected for their contributions to the host department’s discipline.
For more information about the UM School of Pharmacy, call 662-915-7265 or visit http://www.pharmacy.olemiss.