UB Pharmacy Faculty Members Earn Top Awards

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Three faculty members in the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have won top awards for 2007 from the New York State Chapter of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP).

The faculty members -- all clinical assistant professors of pharmacy at UB -- are Linda M. Catanzaro of Buffalo, named educator of the year; Brian T. Tsuji of East Amherst, named researcher of the year; and Robert G. Wahler of Tonawanda, named clinical practitioner of the year.

The AACP annual awards recognize pharmacists who promote excellence and innovation in clinical practice, teaching and research. The ACCP membership is composed of practitioners, scientists, educators, administrators, students, residents, fellows and others committed to excellence in clinical pharmacy and patient pharmacotherapy.

Catanzaro, who earned an associate's degree from Niagara County Community College and a Ph.D. in pharmacy from UB, is program chair of the pharmacy school's HIV Continuing Education Program. She was instrumental in developing the UB HIV Pharmaceutical Care Specialist Certificate Program that trains pharmacists across the United States and as far away as Harare, Zimbabwe. She also directs the Pharmacoinformatics Residency Program and the Pharmacotherapy Information Center, a collaborative research and education initiative between the pharmacy school and the UB Health Sciences Library.

A member of the UB pharmacy faculty since 2005, Tsuji's research interests include investigating mechanisms of resistance in multi-drug resistant bacteria and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling of antimicrobials to suppress the emergence of resistance. The co-author of some 20 peer-reviewed scientific publications, he holds memberships in several professional societies, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America and American Society for Microbiology.

Wahler holds a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the Albany College of Pharmacy, Union University, and a doctorate from UB. He has published in several venues, including the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, a publication of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. His field of expertise is pharmacotherapy pain management and palliative care.