Learn more about the newest faculty members to the PSC department!

Dr. Jace Jones

Email: jjones@rx.umaryland.edu
Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jace_Jones
Can you tell us about your career path leading up to your faculty position at University of Maryland, Baltimore? What was your motivation for choosing a career in academia?

After undergrad, I pursued a scientific career working for an analytical laboratory that specialized in the analysis of environmental contaminants. It was during this time that I developed a passion for analytical chemistry. I was also fortunate to have a close relative and mentor who strongly encouraged me to pursue a graduate degree in chemistry. With the mindset of pursuing a graduate degree in analytical chemistry, I entered graduate school in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington. Upon completion of my PhD, I had a brief postdoc position in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, University of Washington. At this stage, I returned to a career in industry. I spent several years working as the Technical Director of an analytical laboratory. My responsibilities included management of personnel, oversight of day-to-day operations, QA/QC enforcement, and method development. Through this experience, I gained a valuable perspective on the unique demands of being a Scientist in industry/business. It was also from this experience where I realized I wanted to pursue a career in academic research. Industry has a lot of advantages but the demands of running a business are not always aligned with investigating the curious “why” questions encountered in day-to-day science. After weighing the pros/cons of leaving a comfortable industry job, I joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UMB as a research scientist working for Maureen A. Kane with a dual role as the laboratory manager of the Mass Spectrometry Center. Over the past several years, my appreciation and passion for basic science was cultivated and matured which has lead me to my current position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Mass Spectrometry Center.

What is your research area and how do you see your research progressing over the next 5-10 years?

My research area is bioanalytical chemistry. In particular, my research involves developing analytical methodology and technology to probe the structure/function dynamics of biomolecules, specifically lipids and glycolipids. A combination of cutting edge chromatography, ion mobility, and mass spectrometry are used to elucidate structure, and then anchor structure to quantitative abundance. Molecular structure profoundly influences biological function and by confidently defining molecular structure we intend to gain insight into distressed biological pathways that form the basis of disease. One particular model system we are actively pursuing is the role sphingolipid metabolism plays as a biologically marker for liver toxicity in drug induced liver injury (DILI). We are currently developing analytical platforms based on mass spectrometry to delineate sphingolipid structure, anchor sphingolipid structure to quantitative abundance, and then develop 3-dimensional biochemical pathway maps that incorporate sphingolipid structure and abundance. This research is being done in a model DILI system using acetaminophen induced toxicity in primary human hepatocytes. Two other research areas where my research group is actively involved in are identifying lipid biomarkers in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and structure characterization of glycolipids and glycans for vaccine research development. I envision the research my group is carrying out will continue to be at the vanguard of bioanalytical method development in addition to translating robust, validated analytical assays behind basic research to the clinic; realizing the bench to bedside paradigm.   

How will your research impact the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences?

The principal theme of my research program is to develop analytical platforms to structurally characterize, robustly quantify, and spatially localize lipids and glycans in order to gain molecular insight into distressed biological pathways. Success paves the way for a more comprehensive understanding of how specific structure affects biological function, which in turn provides a means for 1.) predicting disease/injury on-set (i.e., prognostic potential), 2.) identifying disease/injury expression (i.e., diagnostic capabilities), and 3.) developing novel targets for pharmacologic intervention. It is my vision that the analytical platforms that my research lab develops will specifically accelerate drug discovery and positively impact human health by reducing the cost and time burden for drug development. This will be accomplished by identifying molecular markers that more efficiently identify toxicity and more clearly visualize mechanisms of action for therapeutic intervention and disease progression.

What are your expectations for students who may be interested in joining your lab? How would you describe your mentoring style?

My expectations for someone who wants to work in my lab is that he/she is interested in how bioanalytical chemistry can significantly impact biomedical research. I’m keenly interested in students who want to ask the “why” question, are enthusiastic about science, and share a passion for research. My approach to mentoring is to foster an inclusive environment that will hold students responsible for academic/research progress while also understanding the challenges academic research demands varies from person to person. I value mentoring and look forward to building long lasting relationships that extend beyond the lab. I enjoy working in the lab where I can actively engage students to independently design and carryout experiments.

What’s your best advice to an aspiring researcher or educator?

I would encourage aspiring scientists to follow their passion. It is hard to predict where your scientific endeavors will take you but as long as you find joy in your work you will be a productive and happy scientist. Science offers a lot of exciting and rewarding career options. I encourage students to explore career options early. I would also encourage you to network early and often. Networking is not easy for most of us but the benefits of meeting your next employer, collaborator, colleague, or friend are well worth it.


Dr. Ryan Pearson

E-mail: rpearson@rx.umaryland.edu
Website: www.ryanpearsonlab.com
Can you tell us about your career path leading up to your faculty position at University of Maryland, Baltimore? What was your motivation for choosing a career in academia?

I graduated from University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC) with my bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering. Later, I went on to pursue a PhD in Biopharmaceutical Sciences at the same university working with Professor Seungpyo Hong, a former post-doctoral researcher from Robert Langer’s laboratory at MIT. While at UIC, I trained in many aspects of pharmaceutical sciences including polymer chemistry, drug and gene delivery, pharmacology, tissue engineering, surface functionalization, and chemical characterization. I eventually moved to the University of Michigan to work as a postdoc with Professor Lonnie Shea in the Biomedical Engineering Department. While at Michigan, I became fascinated with the design of immunomodulatory biomaterials and had the opportunity to contribute on several projects related to immune tolerance. I was also fortunate to work with a startup company to help develop a nanoparticle platform to treat celiac disease, which is currently being tested in humans. Much of my training centers on developing fundamental and functional relationships between materials and biology, and I aim to apply this approach to my independent lab. This past summer, I started as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Maryland – Baltimore.

My decision to pursue this career path stems from my interest in the interdisciplinary nature of the pharmaceutical field and wanting to do research at the forefront of pharmaceutical innovation as novel technologies are often developed in an academic setting. Further, I have always found interactions with students in both the classroom and in the lab to be highly rewarding.

What is your research area and how do you see your research progressing over the next 5-10 years?

My research areas include development of nanomaterials to program immune responses to treat infectious diseases and allergies. Our lab uses a combination of techniques from a multitude of disciplines including nanotechnology and immunology. Over the next 5 – 10 years, I would like to begin to develop an international reputation for my group, publish high impact science, have more opportunities to take on high risk projects, translate technologies into the clinic, and move closer towards developing these technologies for industrial use.

How will your research impact the field of pharmaceutical sciences?

My research will impact the field through our lab’s technological and basic biological discoveries. It is a major focus of my group’s research to employ a simplicity-in-design methodology to our materials development to minimize potential roadblocks that may hinder its translation to clinical application. We identify impactful medical problems and utilize our group’s multidisciplinary training to identify innovative solutions with the potential to improve the lives of millions.  

What are your expectations for students who may be interested in joining your lab? How would you describe your mentoring style?

As the Pharmaceutical Science field is consistently growing and expanding, the students that will thrive in my lab are those who are ambitious, motivated, and hardworking that possess a growth mindset. Students who identify a niche within the discipline and focus their energy on expanding their research within their chosen niche will contribute greatly to the lab, as will applying a multidisciplinary approach to their research and a habit of reading broadly and frequently.

As a mentor, my style is both supportive and hands-on when necessary, but I maintain enough space for students to learn and grow independently. Students are held accountable and expected to resolve issues independently. Individualism is encouraged, and students are more than welcome to pursue niches within the discipline that they demonstrate an interest in.

What is your best advice to an aspiring researcher or educator?

My best advice for students, and something that has helped me the most, is reading broadly and putting in your time in. Forming relationships with peers from other labs both inside and outside of the school is also critical. Some of my most exciting ideas have resulted from conversations with my colleagues. Students are encouraged to ask questions and to trust their instincts because they are the ones doing the lab work and often know best. My final piece of advice is to not stall your research progress due to over-planning. Sometimes a quick and dirty experiment is enough to determine the plausibility of the experiment and facilitate further development steps.


Dr. Daniel Deredge

Email: dderedge@rx.umaryland.edu
Can you tell us about your career path leading up to your faculty position at University of Maryland, Baltimore? What was your motivation for choosing a career in academia?

I completed both my undergraduate and graduate career at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. After that, I had a post-doc position at Case Western Reserve University for a little less than 2 years. At Case Western, this is where I did some biophysical research using mass spectrometry, in particular with HIV systems, which was a very popular topic then. This is where I started working with Dr. Patrick Wintrode. In 2012, I came to UMB with Dr. Wintrode working as a postdoc before recently becoming a research assistant professor. I had much early exposure in my undergraduate career as both a student and a worker, and academia just struck me as being both very interesting and stimulating. Academia is a path which allows for intellectual freedom, pushing you to the edge of any problems or projects which you participate in.

What is your research area and how do you see your research progressing over the next 5-10 years?

My research area is biophysics, looking at protein structure and dynamics in general. I particularly work with an MS-based approach called Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange (HDX), which is complementary with many other techniques. HDX is something that’s been around for 30 years, but it’s a technique that really blew up over the past 10-15 years. HDX is continuously getting better with different technological advances over the years, and is growing in demand. In the future, I think that my research will progress into setting and choosing sets of systems that are biologically and clinically relevant.

How will your research impact the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences?

Our lab specializes in HDX which is used extensively in the preclinical development stage of drug design. HDX has several applications such as in the biologics and formulation fields, as well as in understanding how resistance to such diseases as HIV are acquired, and the determination of stability of therapeutic proteins through aggregation and storage studies. Our lab plans on impacting the field of pharmaceutical sciences by expanding the knowledge base of therapeutic proteins through the use of HDX.

What’s your best advice to an aspiring researcher or educator?

Try things, work on people skills, get along with people, and foster good relationships.


Dr. Ying He

Email: yhe@rx.umaryland.edu
Can you tell us about your career path leading up to your faculty position at University of Maryland, Baltimore? What was your motivation for choosing a career in academia?

I completed my undergraduate studies at Zhejiang University in China, majoring in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Once I completed that program, I found that biomedical research was my passion. I applied to graduate programs in the US and was accepted to the PhD program in Biopharmaceutical Sciences at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a University Fellowship. During my graduate study, I learned the cutting-edge concepts and advanced research tools under the guidance of Dr. Z. Jim Wang, a premiere researcher in opioid pharmacology and AAPS fellow. Later, I was fortunate to identify, and be accepted by Dr. Joseph DeSimone, a world-renowned sickle cell researcher, as my post-doctoral mentor to expand my research area to neuropathy in sickle cell disease. During my training at UIC, I have twice been named a winner of the AAPS National Biotech Student Award by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists; UIC Best Dissertation Award, a NIH Sickle Cell Scholar; and the NIH K99/R00 pathway to independence award. I recently joined the University of Maryland, Baltimore as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences.  

This path towards academia is motivated by my strong scientific curiosity and supported by the growing research ability in a field which I also truly enjoy. I want to be able to work on something, not only as a job, but also be able to build my career around something that I like. In academia, you are given the scientific freedom, which is challenging yet still fun. 

What is your research area and how do you see your research progressing over the next 5-10 years?

My research focus is in pharmacology and neuroscience, specifically relating to pain and addiction. The opioid crisis is a very big problem, as well as the issue of poor control over chronic pain conditions. There’s a phenomenon where many individuals who face chronic pain are hesitant to use pain killers like opiates because they fear becoming addicted.  

There are a few research projects that I plan to establish here at UMB. One topic is related to the research that I have been developed at UIC pertaining to sickle cell disease. Despite new treatments for sickle cell disease, which can even cure the disease by stem-cell transplantation, the pain aspect of the disease still lingers. I am interested in looking at how to solve this sustained pain caused by this lethal genetic blood disorder. Another project that I like to focus on is the mechanisms of cancer pain. Over half of all cancer patients experience inadequate controlled or undermanaged pain. I will apply a pipeline of behavioral neuropharmacology approaches to characterize different cancer pain components and their underlying mechanisms.

How will your research impact the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences?

I hope my research will help to identify effective pharmacological interventions that can ultimately be translated into medications that can alleviate chronic pain associated with different disease conditions without having the adverse addiction potential – this is a topic that really matters and is important in the health care field.  

I really hope that my research will be able to help reduce cancer pain. After coming to pursue my PhD at UIC, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and faced a lot of pain during this time. I would really like to be able to dedicate my research to him and be able to help people facing cancer in the future.  

What are your expectations for students who may be interested in joining your lab? How would you describe your mentoring style?

I am looking for graduate students, pharmacy students, as well as undergraduate students who are interested in the fields of neuroscience, pharmacology and genomics and enjoy doing laboratory research work. I would likely follow the mentoring style that I have received during my graduate and post-graduate trainings, not only as a super hands-on mentor, but to guide students to find their enthusiasm and motivation in scientific research. I view my responsibility to mentor students not ending when their training ends. It is a long-term mentoring relationship that grows into beneficial collaboration and career network for both mentor and mentee.

What’s your best advice to an aspiring researcher or educator?  

To be a competent research or educator, it is important to equip yourself with the knowledge and skills that are meaningful and relevant in a clinical context. Furthermore, problem solving abilities and effective, thoughtful communication skills are essential to the development of future leaders and pioneers.