Gibaldi to be honored at World Congress as ‘Millennial Pharmaceutical Scientist’

Dr. Milo Gibaldi, professor of pharmaceutics and dean emeritus of the School of Pharmacy, will be one of seven U.S. scientists honored at the Millennial World Congress of Pharmaceutical Sciences in San Francisco April 16. He and the other “Millennial Pharmaceutical Scientists” will be honored at the opening ceremonies. In all, 21 scientists from the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe, will receive the honor.

Milo Gibaldi

Those chosen for the award are outstanding pharmaceutical scientists whose contributions have led to significant advances in the field during the past century.

Gibaldi came to the UW in 1978 to become dean of the School of Pharmacy, a position he held until 1995. A native of New York City, he completed both graduate and undergraduate work in pharmacy at Columbia University, where he also began his teaching career. Before coming to the UW, he was professor and chair of pharmaceutics at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

He has been widely honored for his contributions to pharmacy research and education. He is particularly recognized for his contributions in pharmacokinetics (the study of what happens to a drug in the body after it is swallowed or injected) and his books are considered among the premier texts on the subject in the world. In 1986 he became one of only two pharmacists ever elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine.

In 1991 he received the International Pharmaceutical Federation’s Erik Host Madsen Medal for those who have achieved distinction in the pharmaceutical sciences. He has also received the Volweiler Research Achievement Award of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and the Takeru Higuchi Research Prize of the American Pharmaceutical Association.

The first endowed professorship in the UW School of Pharmacy was established in 1993 to honor Gibaldi. The professorship in the Department of Pharmaceutics is designed to focus on research and education in advanced drug delivery systems.

McGraw-Hill recently announced publication of Gibaldi’s Drug Therapy 2000, which contains Gibaldi’s perceptive analysis and insightful commentary on the issues and controversies surrounding new drug development and evolving drug therapies that occurred during 1999. ¶