Researcher Stories
Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.
Balancing Curiosity and Patience in the Pursuit of New Treatments
Julia Bleier, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medicine is developing a new way to target a key brain receptor involved in brain disorders such as anxiety, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease.
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Designing Better Tuberculosis Medicines for the Patients Who Need Them Most
Pareeta Kotecha, a PhD student at the University of Florida, is researching the real-world impacts of GLP-1 medicines in children and adolescents with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
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Turning Serendipity Into Scientific Breakthroughs
Dr. David Nie of Yale University received a 2026 PhRMA Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Drug Discovery for his research that aims to rewire specific proteins to turn on a cell’s cancer-fighting genes.
Read MoreInspired by Women in Science, Driven to Fight Cancer
Shannuo Li, a PhD student in molecular pharmaceutics at the University of Utah, aims to develop new therapies for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that often returns after treatment.
Awardee Spotlight
Sichen Song, MS, PhD
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Receiving the PhRMA Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship is an incredible honor. It fuels my work developing amorphous delivery platforms for more bioavailable therapeutics in global health.”
Following Her Passion for Drug Discovery, One Puzzle Piece at a Time
Kelly O’Rourke, a PhD student at Vanderbilt University, aims to uncover how a key protein helps protect the brain’s dopamine-producing cells, with the goal of finding new treatments for Parkinson’s disease.