UB Pharmacy Announces 2024 Alumni Award Winners

Karl Fiebelkorn, BS '78, MBA ’88 is the recipient of the 2024 Willis G. Gregory Memorial Award. The award is the most prestigious given by the school, honoring an outstanding graduate who personifies the ideals of service, integrity and the profession of pharmacy in the eyes of their colleagues.

Fiebelkorn began his career as a staff pharmacist and then was recruited to the UB SPPS faculty as a clinical instructor in 1991, advancing to the rank of clinical associate professor until his retirement in 2023. Fiebelkorn was an active administrator serving as Assistant/Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Professional Relations from 1999-2014 and Senior Associate Dean for Student, Professional and Community Affairs from 2014-2023. Fiebelkorn was the school’s authority on pharmacy law for over 25 years, helping thousands of students pass the Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination (MPJE) and served as the school’s business management faculty member, advising 81 PharmD/MBA dual degree students and mentoring student teams for the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) Student Business Plan competition.

He has been the recipient of many awards, including UB SPPS Teacher of the Year Award in 2008, the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service in 2019, PAWNY Pharmacist of the Year in 2002, the WNYSHP Robert M Cooper Professionalism Award in 2009, and the Bowl of Hygeia in 2014. In 2018, he was inducted into the PAWNY Pharmacy Hall of Fame.

In the community, Fiebelkorn tirelessly advocated for the profession and served as a change agent, working to expand the pharmacist’s scope of practice in NYS and broadening the ways in which pharmacies can help the community stay healthy. He’s responsible for some of the most popular functions of pharmacies in New York State today, including drug takeback programs, poison prevention initiatives, and the ability of pharmacists to administer immunizations.

His professional involvement extended to service with the Pharmacists Association of Western New York (PAWNY), Pharmacists Society of the State of New York (PSSNY), Western New York Society of Health-system Pharmacists (WNYSHP), New York State Council of Health-system Pharmacists (NYSCHP), American Society of Health-system Pharmacists, American Pharmacists Association National Community Pharmacists Association and the Rho Chi Pharmacy Honor Society, where he held numerous appointed and elected posts.

Kayla Andrews, PharmD ’14, MS ’15, PhD ’18 is the recipient of the 2024 Orville C. Baxter Memorial Professional Practice Award. The award acknowledges leadership within the profession of pharmacy, career innovation and dedication to the school and students.

Scientific Program Leader in Translational Discovery at the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (MRI), Andrews has led research and development efforts to help eradicate malaria. She recently returned from the 8th Pan-African Malaria Conference in Rwanda. There she presented her work on the clinical development of monoclonal antibodies aimed at preventing P. falciparum malaria.

Gates MRI is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and effective use of novel biomedical interventions addressing substantial global health issues. Over the last two years, her team has helped develop a candidate malaria vaccine that is currently in pre-clinical trials. She also serves as liaison to international partners including the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and The Global Fund.

During her tenure at Gates MRI, which began in 2017, Andrews has progressed from Discovery Scientist and Product Development Team Leader responsible for the scientific strategy and project management to develop small molecule treatment of lung infections such as tuberculosis. Prior to her promotion to the Translational Discovery team, she was Product Development Team Leader supporting the infrastructure development for nominating a lead monoclonal antibody candidate and ultimately securing the in-licensing of malaria monoclonal antibodies.

Andrews has been an invited speaker at numerous international and national conferences, including the World Health Organization and has published extensively on the development and application of anti-malaria drugs. While an SPPS student, she was a 2014 recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.

She began her career as a staff and clinical pharmacist while pursuing advanced degrees in pharmaceutical sciences from UB.

In 2015, Andrews joined Cognigen Corporation, where she led pharmacometric analyses and software development projects and built a pharmacometrics communication platform for malaria drug development. Later establishing and growing the Global Health Portfolio to a $5 million+ portfolio funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). She also became a BMGF Quantitative Sciences team member during that time.