Researcher Stories
Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.
Building Better Gene Therapies Through Bioengineering
Kijung Kwak, a PhD student at the University of Maryland-College Park, received a 2026 PhRMA Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery for his research to develop a more effective way to deliver gene therapies to the brain for Parkinson’s disease.
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Balancing Curiosity and Patience in the Pursuit of New Treatments
Julia Bleier, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medicine is developing a new way to target a key brain receptor involved in brain disorders such as anxiety, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease.
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Designing Better Tuberculosis Medicines for the Patients Who Need Them Most
Pareeta Kotecha, a PhD student at the University of Florida, is researching the real-world impacts of GLP-1 medicines in children and adolescents with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Read MoreInspired by Women in Science, Driven to Fight Cancer
Shannuo Li, a PhD student in molecular pharmaceutics at the University of Utah, aims to develop new therapies for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that often returns after treatment.
Awardee Spotlight
Kelly O’Rourke
- Vanderbilt University
“I am honored to receive the Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Discovery, which will advance my research in challenging a noncanonical mechanism of nuclear receptor activation to explore new avenues of targeting Parkinson’s disease.”
