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UW School of Pharmacy Ph.D. Research Programs Rank #1

The University of Washington School of Pharmacy medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences research programs are the best in the nation according to a recent academic ranking. The findings, announced in the January 12 issue of The Chronicle for Higher Education, are based on faculty scholarly activities calculated by The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index.

The Index looked at 104 programs at top ranked institutions from leading State Universities to elite private and ivy-league schools. The UW School of Pharmacy medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical science programs ranked at the top despite tough competition.

“This is a well-deserved honor,” said UW School of Pharmacy Dean, Sid Nelson, PhD, “This ranking, the first based on benchmark data, provides a useful metric analysis of the exceptional work of our faculty.”

The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index partly financed by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and produced by Academic Analytics, a for-profit company, rates faculty members’ scholarly output at nearly 7,300 doctoral programs around the country. It examines the number of book and journal articles published by each program’s faculty, as well as journal citations, awards, honors, and grants received. The Index is being hailed by some in academe for its objective benchmarks, its transparent methodology, and its commitment to regular and predictable reporting. The National Research Council’s rankings of doctoral programs, once the most respected in academe, have not been updated since 1995 and have never included pharmacy research programs in its rankings. Other annual graduate program rankings such as U.S. News & World Report’s have been criticized for years by academics as unscientific popularity contests.

The University of Washington ranked number one in five additional Ph.D. research programs: microbiology, genetics, zoology, business administration, and fisheries science and management.

The University of Washington School of Pharmacy Department of Pharmaceutics has instructional and research programs that emphasize a Physiologically-Based Approach to Drug Delivery and Disposition. This program includes a molecular evaluation of drug delivery, metabolism and transport processes, and the genetic and environmental factors that control enzyme and transporter protein function. The University’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry focuses research in the areas of mechanistic drug metabolism, toxicology, bioanalytical chemistry, molecular modeling, biological mass spectrometry and biological NMR. Learn more about the School, our doctoral programs and our faculty at on our website.