Who We Are

The Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS) is the UK-based professional membership body for Pharmaceutical Scientists.

We represent individuals and organisations from around the globe, throughout their development, in the delivery of excellence in the Pharmaceutical Science sector.

Pharmaceutical Scientists are experts in the research, development and manufacture of medicines. They have a major role in the regulation of medicines and understanding their use in patients.

What We Do

The APS is a not-for-profit organisation. We use revenues to champion innovation and opportunity in Pharmaceutical Sciences thereby improving the development and delivery of medicines for the benefit of patients. Our four key strategic themes, which are the foundation of all APS activities, are:

  • Establish and promote the reputation of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Scientists
  • Influence policy
  • Further scientific knowledge
  • Promote careers

APS Priorities

  • Ensure that we continue to deliver high quality scientific content to our members
  • Attract and retain a diverse and engaged membership community
  • Deliver a successful face to face PharmSci conference
  • Provide a vibrant Focus Group community with new groups aligned with current scientific areas
  • Promote and enhance diversity across our membership, board and fellows
  • Support and grow our accredited institution community

The APS Board & Advisory Board

 

Professor Ryan Donnelly

Position: APS Chair
Categories: The APS Board

Professor Ryan Donnelly holds the Chair in Pharmaceutical Technology at Queen’s University Belfast and is Director of QUB’s interdisciplinary research programme Materials & Advanced Technologies for Healthcare (MATCH). His personal research is centred on design and physicochemical characterisation of advanced polymeric drug delivery systems for transdermal and intradermal drug delivery, with a strong emphasis on improving patient outcomes. He is currently developing a range of novel microneedle technologies through independent research, but also in collaboration with several major pharma partners.

He has obtained substantial UK Research Council, charity and industrial funding and authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications (H-index = 58), including 6 patent applications, 6 textbooks, 23 book chapters and approximately 250 full papers. He has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences. Professor Donnelly is Europe/Africa Editor of Drug Delivery & Translational Research and the Controlled Release Society’s Communications Chair. He has won the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science’s Innovative Science Award (2020), Evonik’s Resomer Award (2018), the Controlled Release Society’s Young Investigator Award (2016), BBSRC Innovator of the Year and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award (2013), the GSK Emerging Scientist Award (2012) and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Science Award (2011).

Ryan is the current chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the UK

 

Bob Clay

Position: APS Treasurer
Categories: The APS Board

Bob Clay established his regulatory consultancy practice through Highbury Regulatory Science in 2014 which supports small/medium size companies and their investors to develop regulatory/business strategies across multiple therapeutic and geographic areas. Before this, he was a VP of Global Regulatory Affairs at AstraZeneca with responsibility for oncology, infection, and personalised healthcare.

He is a member of the Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and works with several, not for profit organisations involved in global health initiatives. He was a board member of TOPRA (The Organisation of Professional Regulatory Affairs) from 2014 – 2018, and President for 2017.

Bob is a pharmacist with more than 30 years’ experience in drug development, leading the global regulatory approval of many products across a range of therapy areas including metabolic diseases, neuroscience, cancer, and infection, involving more than 15 new substances. Earlier in his career, he was a formulation scientist and pharmaceutical reviewer at UK regulatory agency. Bob has held significant leadership roles in regulatory affairs in regional and global functions at several companies including AstraZeneca and Pfizer and served as Chief Regulatory Officer at Kinapse (2014-2017).

 

Dr Kofi Asare-Addo

Position: Reader in Pharmaceutics, Admissions Tutor for Pharmacy (MPharm)
Categories: The APS Board

Dr Kofi Asare-Addo is a Reader in Pharmaceutics, Admissions Tutor for Pharmacy (MPharm) Course at the University of Huddersfield.

Kofi became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2014. His research area includes UV imaging in pharmaceuticals, particle engineering, drug-clay complexations for oral controlled release formulation applications and solubility enhancements (solid dispersions, salts and cocrystals). His work has been presented both nationally and internationally at various pharmaceutical science conferences. Kofi successfully collaborates with other universities and several pharmaceutical industries.

 

Arul Balasundaram

Position: Pharmaceutical Scientist
Categories: The APS Board
Arul Balasundaram:

Arul is a pharmaceutical scientist, who has extensive experience in product development of solids, liquids, suspensions, nasal medical devices and dry powder inhalers using range of technologies. He has held various roles within large Pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer and GSK) and Contract Development Manufacturing Organisations (Patheon – ThermoFisher Scientific and Recipharm). He led formulation, process, analytical development and drug product manufacturing teams ensuring successful clinical manufactures (Phase I to Phase III), technical transfer and scale up for commercial manufacture.

Arul has provided strategic direction for companies in expanding their business offering including control drug development, paediatric drug product development and solubility enhancement.

Arul is passionate about transferring scientific knowledge to the next generation of scientists. As a result, he sits on the advisory board for Greenwich University. He has represented companies as keynote speaker at various conferences and webinars.

 

Professor Hannah Batchelor

Position: Professor in Pharmaceutics
Categories: The APS Board

Professor Hannah Batchelor is a Professor in pharmaceutics at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Science, University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Hannah is a pharmaceutical scientist who has worked in academia, the NHS and within the pharmaceutical industry. She works on the design and manipulation of medicines to create age appropriate drug formulations to maximise clinical efficacy in paediatric patients. Her research interests lie in the optimisation of drug formulations to maximise their biopharmaceutical performance and acceptability to children. Her research is informed by the views of children, young people and parents to ensure that the patients are at the centre of new developments.

She is passionate about pharmaceutical sciences and is motivated to inspire the next generation of scientists.

 

Jo Craig

Position: Senior Vice President CMC
Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Jo is Senior Vice President CMC (Chemistry Manufacturing & Controls) for NeRRe Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotech company located at the Stevenage Biosciences Catalyst.

Jo is a Pharmacist and has spent her entire career working in the pharmaceutical industry with a focus on pharmaceutical development, product quality and the introduction of new manufacturing technologies. Prior to Jo’s NeRRe Therapeutics role, she held the same role for KaNDy Therapeutics prior to its acquisition by Bayer in 2020.

Previously, Jo spent over 30 years at GlaxoSmithKline where her career spanned many leadership roles in CMC product development, most recently as Vice President of Technology & Strategy, Product Development & Supply. Jo led the technology team at the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP) 2017-2018 where she was influential in aligning Pharma and UK Government on future areas for investment as part of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. She continues to be involved with medicines manufacturing in the UK contributing to advisory groups. Jo is a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, an Eminent Fellow of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UK and has been an Advisor to the APS Board for several years.

Ana Sara Cordeiro

Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences

Ana Sara Cordeiro is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences...

 

Ana Sara Cordeiro

Position: Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences
Categories: The APS Board

Ana Sara Cordeiro is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the School of Pharmacy at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK). Following a PharmD from the University of Porto (Portugal) and a PhD in Drug Research and Development from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain!, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast (Belfast, UK). Throughout these years, Sara has developed a background in pharmaceutical formulation, drug delivery, nanomedicine, vaccine delivery and microneedles for transdermal drug delivery and diagnostics.

Currently, she is establishing her independent research group (3Ds- Drug Delivery and Diagnostics) with a focus on improving and facilitating patients’ lives through the development of drug and vaccine delivery systems that are easy to manufacture and scale-up, highly efficient and administered through non-invasive routes. Sara is also the current Editor-in-Chief of the Controlled Release Society (CRS) Newsletter, and e media lead for the CRS Women in Science group.

 

Professor Mohammad Najlah

Position: Professor in pharmaceutics and nanomedicine
Categories: The APS Board

Professor Mohammad Najlah is a Professor in pharmaceutics and nanomedicine at Anglia Ruskin University

He has extensive experience as a teacher, researcher, and manager. Mohammad took a pharmacy degree followed by a postgraduate diploma (Industrial Pharmacy) at Damascus University and obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester. He has an excellent research profile focusing on the development of drug delivery nano-systems for enhanced bioavailability and optimised therapeutic effects. Working within the interface between industry and academia allows Mohammad to assimilate, then transfer knowledge between sectors to valuable effect. His research on developing scaling-up technologies for nanomedicines has attracted several collaborations with industries, which led to several KTP and KEEP+ projects funded by Innovate UK and European Regional Development Fund, respectively. Mohammad is mainly interested in repurposing safe drugs and natural compounds for anticancer therapy. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications in the field of pharmaceutical nanotechnology, filed a patent on novel non-toxic anticancer agents and supervised PhD students and post-doc researchers.

At ARU, Mohammad has established and grown the Pharmaceutical Research Group based entirely on externally funded projects and led the establishment of £3.4 million budgeted multifunctional Lab designed to deliver multidisciplinary education and conduct research for transitional science. He served in several managerial roles where he led the establishment of new undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and has gained extensive experience in study management, supporting research activities and identifying the individual support needs of research and ancillary staff.

 

Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham

Position: Lecturer in Pharmaceutics
Categories: The APS Board

Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham is a pharmacist, Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at King’s College London and Founder of King’s College London Fight the Fakes and Academic Lead. She leads her research group “The Raimi-Abraham Group”. Her research to date has been in pharmaceutical materials and innovative manufacture. More recently she has focused her research efforts within the therapeutic and drug development aspects of malaria.

Prior to her current position as Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at King’s College London, Dr. Raimi-Abraham held positions at University College London (UCL) as an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) postdoctoral researcher position and at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a seconded Quality National Expert.

Dr. Raimi-Abraham is the first graduate of the University of East Anglia School of Pharmacy to be awarded a Ph.D. and more recently won the Outstanding Woman in STEM Precious Award.

Dr Raimi-Abraham has an extensive and original public engagement portfolio which includes uniquely exploring the use of street art to engage public with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research through her social enterprise STEAM:ED Collective, a TEDx talk (TEDx Talk title “Elements of Change: Becoming an Independent Researcher) and a “Go and No-go pills” Somerset House 24/7 exhibition, visited by ~35,000 people (Oct. 2019 – Feb. 2020)). More recently hosting a weekly podcast, Monday Science which discusses the latest in Science, Health and Technology. Dr Raimi-Abraham’s work in research informed teaching has also been recognised by the Nuffield Foundation.

 

Dr Philipp Seib

Position: Registered pharmacist and a Reader
Categories: The APS Board

Philipp is a registered pharmacist and a Reader in Pharmaceutical Materials at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

He obtained his BPharm and MSc from King’s College London and his PhD (2005) in drug delivery from Cardiff University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Technical University Dresden (Germany) and Tufts University (Boston, USA). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His research interest lies at the interface of cell biology, drug delivery and material science. His research mission involves top-down, challenge-based activities centred on developing pharmaceutical materials for healthcare technologies, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes.

 

Jason Crooks

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Jason is Team Director, Drug Product Development, Oral and Inhaled, GlaxoSmithKline.

Jason completed his undergraduate and post graduate education in Pharmacy at Kings College London. In 1997 he joined the SmithKline Beecham clinical manufacturing group where he built experience in the manufacture and release of oral and intravenous dose forms and since then has led several multidisciplinary teams in the development, registration and launch of IV and OSD products across the GSK portfolio. This has included assignments in medicine and process delivery, cell and gene therapy and more recently in process engineering and analytics focussed on platform modernisation and alignment.

 

Dr Linda Hakes

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Linda has more than 40 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having worked for companies such as Glaxo, Marion Merrell Dow, Celltech, Eli Lilly, Schwarz Pharma AG and UCB Biosciences. Her experience covers pharmaceutical development, preclinical development, clinical trial supplies, quality assurance and project leadership. Since 2016 Linda has been an independent consultant with a focus on pharmaceutical development and development strategy.

Linda is a Vice President of FIP (International Pharmaceutical Federation), a member of the Assembly of Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the immediate past Chairman of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She is also visiting Professor at Sunderland University and is eligible to be a Qualified Person. Linda is a Fellow of both the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and FIP.

Kieran Sproston

Formulation Scientist

Kieran Sproston is a Formulation Scientist...

 

Kieran Sproston

Position: Formulation Scientist
Categories: The APS Board

Kieran Sproston is a Formulation Scientist working at Pfizer in Drug Product Development to support development of the formulation and manufacturing processes for solid oral dosage forms. He has experience working on tablet, capsule, and oral suspensions and with both continuous and batch processes. He is a registered Pharmacist who graduated from the University of Manchester and completed his training year split between Paydens community pharmacy and Pfizer. Kieran is passionate about supporting the next generation of scientists and is currently the co-leader of the APS New Scientists Focus Group.

 

Professor David Jones

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

David is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students) and Professor of Biomaterials Science at Queen’s University Belfast.

As an internationally renowned pharmaceutical/biomedical engineer my research seeks to provide engineering solutions to medical and pharmaceutical problems. These include innovations in the design of drug containing implants and medical devices to that reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with medical device related infection. Commercialisation of this research has occurred and is ongoing. Within the pharmaceutical domain, I have developed novel implants for the treatment of local diseases and, additionally, engineering technologies to develop new dosage forms, including strategies in which drugs of low solubility (negating their clinical utility) may be developed for clinical usage.

 

Professor Trevor Jones

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Trevor is Chairman of the Drug Discovery Company, e-Therapeutics and a member of the Boards of Directors of Techimmune LLC and EDX Medical plc. He was a Director of Allergan Inc. (USA), R&D Director of The Wellcome Foundation and Director General of The ABPI.

He holds honorary degrees and Gold Medals from 8 universities; is a founder member of Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV);was a member of The UK Government Regulatory Agency, The Medicines Commission; advisor to the Cabinet Office on the Human Genome project; Chair of the UK Government Advisory Group on Genetics Research; member of the Wales Government Bevan Commission on health; the EU Commission IMI Scientific Advisory Board…and advised the Government of the Netherlands TiPharma on Life Science.

 

Professor Jayne Lawrence

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Jayne is currently Professor and Head of Pharmacy and Optometry at the University of Manchester University. Prior to this she was Professor and Head of the Pharmaceutical Biophysics Group, Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London and Chief Scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Jayne is a pharmacist who. in addition to working in academia, has spent time working in community, hospital and industrial pharmacy. Her research is focuses on improving the delivery of drugs and genetic material, with a special interest determining detailed the molecular architecture of the delivery systems using neutron scattering techniques. Jayne also uses neutron reflectometry to understand the interaction of drugs and genetic material with biomembranes.

 

Dr Mark McAllister

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

Dr Mark McAllister is a Senior Director and Head of Global Biopharmaceutics, part of the Drug Product Design group at Pfizer in Sandwich, Kent. He is a Pharmacy graduate from Queen’s University Belfast and has a pharmaceutics PhD from Aston University. Mark has over 25 years industrial development experience and has specialised in oral delivery systems and biopharmaceutics. He is a former chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and is currently a visiting senior lecturer at King’s College London.

Mark co-led the IMI ‘OrBiTo’ biopharmaceutics project, an academic/industrial collaboration, focused on the development of the next generation of models to predict oral absorption and he currently participates in a number of pre-competitive research programmes including COLOTAN, AGePOP and InPharma Marie Skłodowska-Curie innovative training networks. Mark is a fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

 

Dr John Wahlich

Categories: The APS Advisory Board

John is a chemist with over 40 years’ experience in Pharmaceutical Development gained with a number of major pharmaceutical companies.

He obtained his BSc from Bristol University and his PhD (part-time) from University of Nottingham School of Pharmacy. Until November 2010 he was a Vice President in GlaxoSmithKline and ran various multi-national departments involved with analytical chemistry, Product Line Extension development, physical properties and developability and early stage CMC support. He has a good knowledge of Quality by Design, Change Control and Technology Transfer. He is currently CEO of John Wahlich Associates Ltd a consulting company specialising in the pharmaceutical sciences.

John is currently consulting for a number of companies on early stage product development. He is an Advisory Board member of the UK Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APS), has co-hosted successful workshops on drug developability and has co-organised a number of APS International Pharm Sci conferences (the UK’s premier Pharm Sci event).