Researcher Stories
Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.
Developing Nanomedicines to Deliver Gene Therapy for Kidney Diseases
Anastasiia Vasylaki, a PhD student at City College of New York, aims to develop a treatment to slow or stop the progression of chronic kidney disease associated with high blood pressure.
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From Childhood Experiments to Preventing Deadly Heart Rhythms
Hilda Jafarah, a third-year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, is exploring how to prevent life-threatening irregular heartbeats that can occur in the days following a heart attack.
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Eavesdropping on the Brain to Map the Biology of Addiction
Dr. Dakota Brockway, a postdoctoral trainee at the University of Pittsburgh, aims to map brain circuits to understand how alcohol hijacks them to design better treatments.
Read MoreUsing AI to Streamline Development of New Antibacterial Drugs
Damilola Olukorede, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, aims to improve the process for making new antibacterial drugs derived from natural sources like plants.
Awardee Spotlight
Masuda Akther, MS
- Rutgers University
“I’m so grateful and excited to be awarded this prestigious fellowship through the PhRMA Foundation. It gives me confidence in my path in translational research and motivates me to keep working toward discoveries that can make a real difference.”
Tailoring Nanoparticles for Better Cancer Treatment
Kenneth Hulugalla, a PhD candidate at the University of Mississippi, is studying how proteins in a patient’s blood interact with nanoparticle drug carriers and influence whether therapies reach cancer tumors.