The University of Florida College of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy is expanding its faculty to build a
Center of Excellence in Pharmacoepidemiology.
With new College leadership and a commitment to position UF among the top 10 pharmacy schools in the country, the Department will appoint
Two New Faculty at the level of
Assistant/Associate/Full Professor in
Pharmacoepidemiology
The successful candidates are expected to have an established federally-funded research program and a successful track record in graduate education. Both positions will be located In the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the main campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, the flagship AAU academic research institution of the State of Florida. The successful applicants will join a vibrant graduate program with 26 PhD students and more than 150 MS students. Resources are available to enhance the already excellent infrastructure for pharmacoepidemiologic research. New faculty will have an opportunity for leadership roles in efforts to build a Center of Excellence. The program is contained within UFHealth, one of the largest integrated academic health centers in the country.
Both positions are 12-month tenure-track appointments, available immediately. Applications will be accepted until an applicant pool has been established. Interested applicants should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and the names of three individuals willing to serve as professional references to:
Almut Winterstein, RPh, PhD, Professor & Chair of Search Committee
UF College of Pharmacy, PO Box 100496; Gainesville, FL 32610-0496
almut@ufl.edu
About Us…
The University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a 2,000-acre campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906. The University of Florida is ranked 17th overall among all public national universities in the current 2013 U.S. News & World Report rankings, and consistently ranks within the top 100 universities worldwide. It is considered a “Public Ivy,” a designation reserved for the top public universities in the United States. Since 1985, UF has been a member of the Association of American Universities, the higher-education organization comprising the top 62 public and private institutions in North America. It is one of three “research flagship universities” within the State University System of Florida, as designated by the Florida Legislature.
UF has more than 4,000 faculty members with distinguished records in teaching, research and service, including 37 Eminent Scholar chairs and 40 faculty elections to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It is the seventh largest single-campus university in the United States with almost 50,000 students enrolled. The University of Florida is home to sixteen academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. It offers multiple graduate professional programs, 123 master’s degree programs and 76 doctoral degree programs in eighty-seven schools and departments. As of fall 2011, Florida ranked fourteenth among all institutions in the number of new National Merit Scholars enrolled.
UF’s research and development expenditures totaled $740 million in 2011, placing UF 12th among public universities nationally, up from 14th the previous year. UF ranked eighth among universities in the number of U.S. patents issued in 2011 and in the number of start-up companies created in 2011. UF was tied for 13th in the number of invention disclosures in 2011. UF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute is one of only 60 that the National Institutes of Health is funding to speed the transformation of scientific discoveries into medical advances for patients. UF’s Institute on Aging is home to one of only 10 Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Centers nationally and the leader of a $60 million study to determine whether physical activity can help older adults remain mobile.
University of Florida Health Science Center
The University of Florida Health Science Center (HSC) celebrated its 50th year in 2006. It is one of the country’s few academic health centers with six health-related colleges located on a single, contiguous campus. The colleges, including Colleges of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health and Health Professions, and Veterinary Medicine, teach the full continuum of higher education, enrolling more than 6,900 students and 1,100 interns and residents each year. The UF HSC generated over 50% of UF’s total research awards, nearly $350 million in grants and contracts in FY 12. In addition to the six colleges, there are six major health-related research centers and institutes (Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Institute on Aging, UF Shands Cancer Center, Emerging Pathogens Institute, McKnight Brain Institute, and Genetics Institute) designed to create synergistic and collaborative research opportunities.
The HSC is closely affiliated with UF Health, part of the University of Florida Health System, with seven hospitals including two academic medical centers in Gainesville and Jacksonville, a children’s hospital, three community hospitals, two specialty hospitals, and more than 80 outpatient primary and specialty care practices across North Florida, all linked through a fully integrated electronic health record system.
UFHealth is the state’s leading healthcare referral system and one of the Southeast’s most respected health-care providers with close to 80,000 hospital admissions, 155,000 emergency room visits and 930,000 outpatient visits annually. More than 1,500 UF faculty and community physicians representing more than 100 medical specialties work provide patient care not only within Shands HealthCare but also at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center located right across the UFHealth campus.
UF College of Pharmacy
The UF College of Pharmacy opened its doors in 1923 with an entering class of 43 students. In 2002 the college expanded from one campus to four campuses around the State of Florida, yielding with more than 1100 entry-level PharmD students one of the highest enrollments among pharmacy schools in the US. The Ph.D. graduate program (established in 1930) has also grown from 66 Ph.D. students in 1997 to 80 students in 2012. The College has successfully used distance learning in its Working Professional Pharm.D. (WPPD) program, the largest in the US for many years with over 400 students, and M.S. degree graduate programs for working professionals. The current financial state of the College is solid, having with more than $40M revenue the only positive budget among colleges within UF in 2012.
Research activities in the College span a broad range of interests and generated approximately $9 million in extramural funding in 2012. The College has four research centers within the College: The Center for Pharmacogenomics, the Center for Drug Discovery, the Center for Food Drug Interaction and Education, and the Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology. The most recent initiative to advance the research and graduate missions is establishment of the interdisciplinary Institute of Therapeutic Innovation for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology at the Lake Nona campus, which will focus on regulatory sciences, drug-modeling simulation, and translational science. The College’s long‐term strengths in the areas of research are pharmacogenomics, pharmacometrics, pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, and drug design and discovery.
The College has extensive affiliations, partnerships and collaborations to support practice excellence. A close relationship with UF Health has forged successful development of interprofessional educational and innovative advanced pharmacy practice experiences in Gainesville, strong involvement in CTSI, other interdisciplinary research, and service that has improved patient safety. In addition to active practice sites maintained by clinical practice faculty, two Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Call Centers have been established. To meet the continuing professional development of pharmacy practitioners, the College has five pharmacy residency programs and five clinical fellowship programs.
Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy
While being a small department with only 10 full-time faculty, the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy includes a broad range of programs and resources. Faculty is actively engaged in the entry-level PharmD program and has its own graduate program, including about 25 PhD students, a small number of residential and more than 150 online MS students. Teaching is supported by a departmental academic program coordinator as well as the college IT and instructional design team. The Departments focus in research and graduate training is focused on the evaluation of drugs and related medical technology. This focus includes classic pharmacoepidemiologic work in drug safety, comparative effectiveness, as well as patient safety and program evaluation as related to medication use.
The department owns a data center with a state-of the art 14TB research server and a variety of administrative and clinical research databases including access to the fully integrated electronic health record system of UF Health. A departmental research coordinator supports all administrative work, while 3 full-time MS-level analysts provide programming support. With new leadership in the College of Pharmacy and a commitment to excel the College to rank among the top 10% pharmacy schools in extramural funding, the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes has been allocated resources to build its research and graduate program in pharmacoepidemiology and patient safety and program evaluation.
Community
Gainesville, Florida has a population of over 125,000, with the surrounding population of Alachua County exceeding 250,000. Gainesville is an easy drive to Florida’s beaches on coasts, as well as Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Jacksonville. Gainesville has been ranked as a top place to live and boasts a vibrant arts and cultural community that includes the Florida Museum of Natural History, Harn Museum of Art and the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The climate is mild, with more than 2,800 hours of sunshine annually and average temperatures of 65 degrees in January and 89 degrees in June. The local economy derives from agriculture to manufacturing and the University, Shands and the VA are the leading employers in the region. The presence of UF has led to numerous start-up companies in the community, and the recent creation of the Florida Development Hub and Innovation Square. While cost of living are low, Gainesville offers an excellent public school system. More information about the city, its attractions, economy and its excellent school system can be found at: www.cityofgainesville.org