But the scholarship has grown immensely in financial benefit since its inception. The stories of two recipients, one in 2024 and one in 1975, show its impact over 50 years and for the future.

Shaping her experience

In March, second-year Doctor of Pharmacy student Kassidy Johnson was lying in a hospital bed, unable to speak or walk because of a severe concussion caused by a car crash. While she recovered, she found a new level of support from her peers and professors at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.

“The professors were very approachable. They moved their schedules around so I could come in to take the tests or take tests online,” Johnson said. “They were very understanding, and I could tell that they just really cared about me.”

Though she still faces months of rehab, Johnson’s grit and determination got her caught up on her studies. She’s now back in the classroom ready to take on the remainder of her training, showing the tenacity that helped her earn the Fonnie Jackson Andrews scholarship in fall 2024.

The scholarship is one of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s signature Blouin scholars program awards. It will cover Johnson’s tuition for all four years of the program, an international rotation with the Global Pharmacy Scholars program in her fourth year, and professional development opportunities throughout her time at the school.

“This scholarship has freed me so that I do not have to work while I’m going through this program,” she said.

Johnson practiced as a doula before pharmacy school, so she is interested in learning more about options in obstetrics, pediatrics or neonatology. “We have two faculty members that we can go to for, really, anything. The scholarship has really shaped my experience here as a whole.”

Setting up sustainable income

Dan Dalton ’76 ’80 (MS) was the very first recipient of the Fonnie Jackson Andrews award in 1975. A first-generation college student putting himself through pharmacy school on the work-study program, Dalton used the award to set up a sustainable income as a photographer to pay for the rest of his education.

Dalton spent the funds at Foister’s Camera Store on Franklin Street, augmenting and upgrading his photography equipment. Throughout his time at UNC, he photographed events and special functions for the school as well as student organizations, fraternities and sororities — even wedding photos for his classmates.

“Being creative helped me make connections that created ideas,” Dalton said. “That same creativity and curiosity, amplified over various personal and professional moments throughout my post-college experience, led to the culmination of being recruited back to my alma mater 27 years later.”

In 2007, Dalton played a pivotal part in launching, and later expanding, the UNC Hemophilia Treatment Center Pharmacy. He continued this work for 15 years, guiding and managing a program that now covers not only the University’s center, but also the four other federally recognized hemophilia treatment centers in North Carolina.

After a long career of varying roles in pharmacy, Dalton now does consulting work. He’s also still practicing photography, recently venturing into videography.

Johnson and Dalton are connected across five decades by the Fonnie Jackson Andrews scholarship, an award that has grown in worth and impact. Scholarships like this one are made possible thanks to the generous support of donors. If you would like to support PharmD student scholarships, reach out to Regina Craven, PharmD program director of development, at cravenra@unc.edu.

Read more about Johnson and Dalton.

Naloxone Near Me is the first website to compile sources of available no-cost and pharmacy-based naloxone in one place. Naloxone is a medication that is highly effective at reversing opioid overdoses. Individuals visiting the website can select any county in North Carolina and find sources of no-cost naloxone and whether pharmacies sell naloxone in that county. The website also includes a link to Naloxone Saves, which directs people to specific locations where they can access naloxone.

“I hope Naloxone Near Me helps counties identify where they can improve naloxone access so they can better advocate for funding to eliminate access gaps,” said Delesha Carpenter, professor and executive vice chair in Eshelman’s division of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy. “That’s the main goal with the website: to help counties identify specific ways they can improve access to naloxone.”

The school started this process in 2023 when they received funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health to create a novel place-based measure of naloxone availability. Researchers started with a survey of organizations who were distributing no-cost naloxone. Then, they obtained access to Medicaid and Medicare prescription claims data and conducted “secret shopper” studies of pharmacies to see if they had over-the-counter naloxone in stock.

Having naloxone can help in situations where people may witness an overdose.

“People mistakenly think they’re safe if they are using nonopioid substances, like cocaine, but opioids like fentanyl are often mixed into these drugs, so it’s important to have naloxone on hand to reverse an overdose,” said Carpenter. “It’s good to have naloxone available if you’re going to be around somebody who is using basically any kind of drug because if they do overdose and you then administer naloxone, it’s very effective at reversing overdoses and preventing death.”

Pharmacy-based distribution of naloxone has been shown to reduce overdose deaths, so it’s important that pharmacies sell naloxone, especially in areas where other opioid overdose prevention services are unavailable. In addition to selling naloxone, pharmacies can partner with community-based organizations to distribute naloxone for free.

“I think, for the state of North Carolina, this can be a trickle-down effect that can benefit everybody,” said Carpenter.

The school hopes to continue updating the website annually and is seeking funding to keep the site updated, since new sources of naloxone are coming online every month.

At the time, chemotherapy options were “really nasty, nontargeted chemo drugs,” she recalls. That conversation sparked a drive to understand how cancer drugs work, and how to make them better. Later, her own experience with battling breast cancer gave her a patient’s perspective when doing her own research.

Today, Pattenden is an associate professor in the division of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. A doctoral graduate from the University of Toronto and later a postdoctoral researcher at both the Stowers Institute in Kansas City and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, she has built her lab around chromatin biology and its central role in cancer.

As Pattenden explained, her lab focuses on chromatin, the scaffold that packages DNA into a cell nucleus. For the DNA sequence to be read, the chromatin needs to be opened. Her work highlights how these accessible “openings” in chromatin often give cancer cells their identity and drive their growth.

Pattenden’s lab is tackling some of the toughest challenges in pediatric oncology in two major projects.

One project focuses on Ewing sarcoma, a bone and soft tissue cancer in children and young adults. Working with Dr. Ian Davis, chief of pediatric hematology oncology at UNC Children’s Research Institute, Pattenden’s team worked to uncover compounds that might counteract the effects of an abnormal protein. This abnormality opens chromatin in places it shouldn’t, activating gene expression programs that drive tumor growth. Her lab designed an assay to target its activity — specifically, its ability to open chromatin.

With support from the National Cancer Institute’s Experimental Therapeutics program, the team screened more than 120,000 compounds. After three years in the NExT program, and over 15 years of research at Carolina, they are now narrowing down compound candidates that might one day move to the clinic for testing.

“We’re talking about the molecular mechanism, so we’re getting right down to the cellular level,” she said. “Success for us looks like finding a new target or a new way to target a key pathway in the tumor cell.”

A second major effort is aimed at the aggressive pediatric cancers osteosarcoma, a cancer that begins in the cells that form bones, and neuroblastoma, a cancer that starts in immature nerve cells.

Whether working with pediatric oncologists, chemists or engineers, Pattenden views teamwork as essential. “I think the only way any of these projects would be possible is because of collaboration,” she said.

Ultimately, her motivation circles back to patients. Cancer is not one disease but many, each requiring new ideas and new tools.

“These diseases are so complicated. Because cancer isn’t just one thing, it’s many, many, many things, we need this kind of research,” she said. “Our goal is to ultimately find a target that we can modulate with a small molecule to specifically target the cancer so that we don’t negatively affect normal cells in the process.”

Read more about Pattenden’s research.

Read more about Carolina’s research impact.

Each researcher has authored multiple papers that rank in the top 1% by citation for their field and publication year in Clarivate’s Web of Science platform over the past 11 years. The list is then refined using quantitative metrics, as well as qualitative analysis and expert judgment.

This year, 6,868 individuals across 60 countries earned the distinction.

The University’s most-cited researchers include:

Biology and biochemistry

Xi-Ping Huang, UNC School of Medicine

Clinical medicine

Dr. John B. Buse, UNC School of Medicine

Dr. Lisa A. Carey, UNC School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Sidney C. Smith Jr., UNC School of Medicine

Cross-field

Gianpietro Dotti, UNC School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

Rachel L. Graham, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Sarah R. Leist, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Nigel Mackman, UNC School of Medicine

Evan Mayo-Wilson, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Alexandra Schafer, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Jenny P.Y. Ting, UNC School of Medicine

Chao Wang, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Wei You, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Yuling Zhao, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Engineering, environment and ecology, materials science, and physics

Jinsong Huang, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Immunology

David van Duin, UNC School of Medicine

Mathematics

David Wells, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Microbiology

Ralph Baric, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Lisa E. Gralinski, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Timothy P. Sheahan, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Nutrition

Barry M. Popkin, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Pharmacology

Bryan L. Roth, UNC School of Medicine, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Pharmacology and toxicology

Alexander V. Kabanov, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Plant and animal science

Jeffery L. Dangl, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Hans W. Paerl, UNC College of Arts and Sciences and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Psychiatry and psychology

Margaret A. Sheridan, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Social sciences

Noel T. Brewer, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Stephen R. Cole, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Yan Song, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Nine additional researchers were also cited for work conducted while at UNC-Chapel Hill:

Cross-field

Bo Chen, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

John McCorvy, formerly with UNC School of Medicine

Zhenyi Ni, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Dinggang Shen, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Qi Wang, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Haotong Wei, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Xun Xiao, formerly with UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Pharmacology and Toxicology

Elena V. Batrakova, emeritus, UNC School of Medicine

Social Sciences

Byron J. Powell, formerly with UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

Lola uses artificial intelligence to tailor product suggestions based on individual preferences and goals — balancing nutrition, taste, cost and convenience. The platform’s recommendations aim to make environmentally sound, healthful shopping intuitive and accessible rather than burdensome. Unlike one-size-fits-all approaches, it adapts to each user’s context and previous purchasing behaviors, making it more likely to influence real purchasing behavior.

“For a long time, we’ve worked on ‘nudges’ to help consumers make healthier choices, but implementation in grocery stores has been limited because of the physical nature of those spaces,” Taillie says. “The combined increase in online shopping plus the powerful nature of AI to personalize recommendations opens up major opportunities to help consumers make healthy choices more easily.”

The Kairos program will support Taillie through a six-month venture sprint, pairing her with two dedicated “venture builders” (one business-oriented and one technical) to validate the problem space, develop a compelling value proposition and pilot the platform in real markets. The experience will conclude with a presentation to potential investors, partners and other developers at a Demo Day in March 2026.

The sprint will be powered by a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services — which provides participating teams with advanced cloud infrastructure — AI/ML services, technical mentorship, and startup credits to build and scale rapidly. This partnership gives projects like Lola a distinct edge in developing secure, scalable health solutions.

“Kairos offers an incredible opportunity to quickly learn how to translate research into real-world impact through commercialization,” Taillie said. “At the end of the day, our goal is scalability — to positively affect the most people possible. This program will allow us to act as a ‘dietitian in your pocket,’ helping us reach many more people, which is the ultimate dream for everyone working in public health.”

With the award, Taillie joins a growing group of UNC faculty innovators who are translating promising research into real-world digital health ventures. Her project, which also features the collaboration of the Center for AI in Public Health, highlights how AI and behavioral science can converge to shift food environments, moving academic insight toward measurable public health outcomes.

“A program like Kairos is exactly what we need to tackle today’s urgent public health challenges,” says Anne Glauber, director of innovation at the Gillings School. “By connecting researchers with resources in cutting-edge AI technologies and market expertise, it accelerates the path from evidence-based innovation to meaningful results.”

The center takes a fully integrated approach to drug discovery by bringing together all the expertise and infrastructure needed under one roof. Hits generated through artificial intelligence can be quickly tested and refined through the center’s collaborative groups. The groups are led by pharmacy school faculty:

• Lead discovery, center director and professor Ken Pearce
• Medicinal chemistry, professor Xiaodong Wang
• Chemical biology, associate professor Lindsey James
• Computational biophysics, associate professor Konstantin Popov

AI for drug discovery

Within the center, Popov is pioneering ways to integrate AI into drug discovery. His biophysics and informatics for drug discovery lab is using AI to tackle some of the world’s most pressing health challenges, including tuberculosis and cancer.

Popov and his team were invited to join Jeff Aubé, Eshelman Distinguished Professor, and Dr. Carl Nathan at Weill Cornell Medicine, the TB Alliance and the Gates Foundation on a large collaborative project that was winding down.

Using a novel AI-guided generative method, Popov’s team uncovered compounds capable of targeting a critical TB protein in just six months — with a fraction of the effort and time typically required.

“We were able to come up with several very promising compounds and in collaboration with chemists from Aubé’s group, boosted their enzyme potency more than 200-fold in just a few iterations,” said Popov. “But because of the flexibility of our approach, designed to work efficiently within a small, dynamic academic team, we were able to move much faster. “

For developing targeted cancer therapies, his group applied a similar strategy — using preliminary screens, conducted in the center, to identify promising molecules, then refining them with AI to design compounds that are more effective and less toxic to healthy cells.

Popov emphasizes that while AI is a powerful tool, it can’t succeed in isolation. “You need to incorporate reality checks along the way,” he said. “Otherwise, the model can hallucinate and generate compounds that look great on the screen but can’t actually be synthesized or would be too toxic. By working closely with chemists, we keep AI grounded in biological reality.”

This balance of computational innovation and experimental collaboration has enabled his lab to design biologically relevant and synthetically feasible de novo compounds — molecules that don’t exist in any catalog. This approach allows the creation of entirely new chemical starting points that would be impossible with traditional drug screening, which is limited to testing compounds that already exist in libraries.

The DELi Platform

Popov is also committed to democratizing access to AI. His lab recently developed the DNA-Encoded Library informatics platform, the first open-source software capable of rivaling commercial tools for analyzing DNA-encoded library data.

“Very few published AI tools developed for research are actually used,” said Popov. “We want to change that by building practical tools that are easy to access and use in academia.”

Unlike proprietary software controlled by large companies, DELi is freely available, easy to install and provides extensive documentation and ongoing support from Popov’s team. “It’s the first open-source package of its kind, and the feedback has been amazing,” Popov said.

He hopes to spark broader adoption of AI tools across the academic community, helping labs everywhere accelerate discovery without prohibitive costs.

“AI can accelerate the early stages of drug discovery dramatically,” Popov said. “But it only works in the right hands — when scientists bring their knowledge of chemistry and biology to guide the process. That’s what makes the difference.”

The program trains the next generation of pharmacists by focusing on practice advancement and clinical education. In this partnership between the pharmacy school and premier pharmacy locations, preceptors and residents work together in community pharmacies across North Carolina.

Since about 95% of Americans live within 5 miles of a community pharmacy, each is a vital resource, especially for those in rural areas.

“Many of our sites are in rural counties and communities. Pharmacists are often the most accessible health care providers because consumers can walk into their pharmacy at any time and then have access to a trained professional,” said Macary Weck Marciniak ’00 (PharmD), residency program director.

(Submitted photo)

Residents are licensed pharmacists with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. After completing the program, they can either accept a position at a clinical site or apply to another specialty program to continue their training.

The program has supported 163 residents over the past 25 years and is accredited by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in partnership with the American Pharmacists Association. Prospective residents apply for the program and indicate their interest in various sites, and successful candidates match with one site where they will train for a year.

The program partners with practice sites across North Carolina, where pharmacist preceptors mentor residents. The sites include independent community pharmacies, large national chain pharmacies, supermarket pharmacies and ambulatory care settings where pharmacists and patients interact with other health care providers.

“The preceptor mentoring relationships are building diverse and meaningful experiences for our residents. At the same time, we’re building the pipeline of the workforce here in North Carolina. Right after their residency, they’re ready to step into leadership roles in their community,” said Marciniak. “I think of it as little Tar Heel footprints across the state, since we have these practice sites in western, central and eastern North Carolina.”

Moose Pharmacy owner Joe Moose and his father, William, approached Carolina to collaborate with the program from the beginning.

“Our proudest accomplishment is our footprint across North Carolina and nationwide. The residency program graduates are leaders all over the country and are raising the bar for pharmacy and health care in their communities,” Moose said.  “I love the innovation and the fact that we get to try out new models to deliver better care. If we didn’t have those residents, it would be tougher to pull that off.”

Preceptors and residents offer a variety of patient care services. Residents tackle a wide range of tasks each day — mentoring students, teaching lectures, working directly with patients and developing new programs. They administer vaccines, provide medication management services and conduct point-of-care testing for COVID-19, flu, blood pressure and blood sugar.

(Submitted photo)

“We have a phrase here, and we call it building your toolbox. Our pharmacy is a very innovative space, which means we are doing things that have never been done in a community pharmacy,” said Amie Howe ’01 (PharmD), Moose Pharmacy pharmacist and residency site coordinator for the PGY1 residency at Moose Pharmacy. “The residents play a huge role in developing those projects.”

Looking back on the program’s history, Marciniak said, “it’s amazing to say we’ve had something that stood the test of time for 25 years, with various practice partners and over 150 trainees. Our graduates are carrying forward what they’ve learned to help in every community they serve.”

The Graduate School’s annual 3MT is designed to sharpen public speaking and storytelling. Students say it’s practice for moments such as job interviews, conversations with a policymaker or reporter or meetings with potential funders. The school’s CareerWell team offers participants workshops and consultations.

Read about three projects from the competition.

Bugs as drugs

Alita Miller, a doctoral candidate in pharmaceutical sciences at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, won first place for “Bugs as Drugs: A New Way to Treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Miller will represent UNC-Chapel Hill at the regional 3MT competition, hosted by the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools.

Miller is developing enhanced probiotics — the “good bacteria” people often take for gut health — to help treat inflammatory bowel diseases. She hopes to translate that research into therapies and into leadership in the biotech world.

“One big aspect of leading teams or leading a company is being able to communicate in a very easy to understand way,” she said. “That’s what I learned through the 3MT experience.”

Dialects in children’s TV shows

Nicole Peterson, a doctoral candidate in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, won the People’s Choice award for “Intersections of Dialect, Gender, Race and Class in Children’s Television.” Her research examines how streaming shows for children portray different dialects — specifically Southern accents and African American Vernacular English — and how those portrayals can reinforce stereotypes or erase authentic voices.

“I can’t present 200 pages of research in an interview, but I can get them to listen for three minutes,” Peterson said.

Peterson’s preliminary findings show that of the more than 1,000 characters studied, about 4% used a Southern accent and less than 3% used an AAVE accent.

Stereotyping of characters with Southern and African American Vernacular English accents included depicting both as nonhuman and Southern speakers as poor, uncultured and low class. Women with AAVE-accents tend to be depicted as managers and modern strong Black women, while men with AAVE-accents are often shown as emotionally immature and broken.

For Peterson, the clarity from preparing is critical to her career. “Our most marketable skill is our ability to communicate. You’re going to have to talk to people. AI is not going to get rid of that.”

Political prediction markets

Parker Bach, also a Hussman doctoral student, won second place for “Who Called It? Information, Culture and Public Opinion on Political Prediction Markets.” He researches prediction markets –– platforms where people wager on future events –– with a focus on election outcomes. “Journalists often treat odds in prediction markets like they’re science, so I want to know how people decide to bet in them,” he said.

Bach found:

• Around the 2024 elections, journalists started reporting on prediction market odds alongside or in place of poll-based forecasts.
• After the election, news references to prediction markets as evidence continued on topics beyond just elections.
• The more journalists report market odds like scientific fact, the more incentive there is for people with money to move markets artificially to make news.
• Prediction markets forecast elections fairly well, but more research is needed to know how well they predict other events.

Bach called the competition “a great chance to work on not only explaining what you’re doing to a general audience but also crystallizing for yourself why that’s important,” adding that public speaking is expected of academics but rarely taught directly.

See the presentation videos.

Students studying biomedical engineering, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and pre-health participated in the event, held Oct. 4 and 11 at the UNC Rehabilitation Center at UNC Health Hillsborough campus.

The group of 12 worked through patient barriers, including lack of social support and visual deficits, to create solutions that assisted patients. Students had the chance to see how the rehab center team works and receive feedback from unit professionals.

The event culminated in presentations to a team of judges who scored on four criteria: understanding the problem, consideration of a patient’s needs, iteration in the design process and how well the solution worked.

The winning team receives consultation from an LVAD coordinator during the design-a-thon. (IPEP)

The winning team included senior and biomedical engineering major Jana Khalafallah and PharmD students McKenna Good and Samantha Van Voorhis. Their solution was a split clamshell mechanism with a grip surface and anti-slip features that would help patients with poor dexterity change the battery of their left ventricular assist device.

“Participating in the design-a-thon enhanced my understanding of how interdisciplinary collaboration can drive innovative, patient-centered solutions,” Good said. “I was intimidated by the engineering-focused project, but working alongside students from biomedical engineering and other health disciplines helped me recognize the value of stepping outside of my comfort zone and seeking out diverse perspectives.”

The Office of Interprofessional Education and Practice designs and supports learning experiences that enhance the capacity and capability to improve health outcomes. Students can complete immersion experiences like the design-a-thon to be recognized as an IPEP Distinguished Scholar.

Students can apply now for the next design-a-thon, planned for January 2026.

This joint degree, offered by two of the highest-ranked schools in pharmacy and pharmacology in the world, is designed to train the next generation of leaders in the science, policy and practice of bringing medicines to people around the globe. Graduates of the MGMD will be prepared to apply expertise to solve pressing global challenges in medicine access and development.

“We are excited about this new degree offering,” said Stephen Eckel, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy associate dean of global engagement. “Having the opportunity to get a joint degree from two of the best pharmacy schools in the world is unprecedented.”

The MGMD is a joint venture, with faculty from both universities working together at every stage of the student journey. From the first classroom lecture to the final capstone project, students will benefit from the combined expertise, networks and resources of two world-class universities known for their excellence in pharmaceutical sciences and health outcomes research.

The program’s didactic journey, based on Monash’s campus in Melbourne, Australia, spans the first two semesters, where students gain foundational knowledge in medicines development, regulation and access. This is followed by a third semester focused on placements that immerse students in real-world problem solving with global pharmaceutical companies, international organizations and research institutions. Placements will be based in either Melbourne’s biotechnology industry or North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

There are a variety of impactful career pathways for MGMD graduates. Opportunities include roles in pharmaceutical companies, global health organizations, international supply chain management, academic research, consulting and more. Whether shaping policy for medication access, advancing research in global clinical trials or ensuring that supply chains reach underserved populations, MGMD alumni will be well-positioned to make a lasting difference.

“By uniting the strengths of Carolina and Monash, this program stands as a testament to what global collaboration in education can achieve,” said Eckel. “The MGMD is more than a degree—it is a commitment to preparing leaders who will advance medicine development on an international scale.”

Learn more about the program at an informational webinar on Oct. 29 at 4 p.m. ET.