SOP Enters New Agreement with China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Schools will work together to facilitate joint educational, research, and scientific exchanges.

By Malissa Carroll
March 18, 2014

The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy recently entered into an agreement with the School of Pharmacy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China to explore joint educational, research, and scientific exchanges. This agreement, which supports the School of Pharmacy’s strategic initiative to encourage innovative interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and international experiences in education, practice, and research, will be led by Peter Swaan, PhD, associate dean of research and graduate education and professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (PSC) at the School of Pharmacy, and Lei Fu, PhD, associate dean for external affairs and professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

“The School of Pharmacy is pleased to partner with Shanghai Jiao Tong University as we both strive to offer our graduate students the best education available and as we endeavor to make new discoveries in our labs, discoveries that will ultimately improve human health,” says Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, dean and professor of the School of Pharmacy. “This partnership provides a wealth of opportunities for our students and our faculty working in many scientific disciplines to engage with other students and researchers in China to exchange ideas, to collaborate on projects, and to learn from one another. I look forward to seeing all that this partnership will surely produce.”

International cooperation in research and innovation is a priority for the School of Pharmacy.

“The School of Pharmacy is committed to advancing scientific knowledge across the spectrum of drug discovery, health services, and practice-based and translational research, with a significant focus on collaborative partnerships,” says Swaan. “We entered into this agreement with the faculty at Shanghai Jiao Tong University because we knew it was a progressive school with a solid reputation. In addition, many of their key faculty members have been trained in the United States and are familiar with our higher education system.”

The new agreement between the School and Shanghai Jiao Tong University will help facilitate the exchange of students for long or short study programs; the exchange of faculty members for the purposes of research, teaching, and other scholarly activities; the development of academic exchange programs; and the notification of the availability of grants for international cooperative research.

“Both schools are very eager to work together to combine our strengths and capitalize on key opportunities in research, practice, and education,” says Swaan. “The School of Pharmacy is also excited for the opportunity to expand its recruitment efforts for high quality students in its graduate and postdoctoral fellowship programs. We have two online master’s programs in regulatory science and pharmacometrics, which we are looking forward to sharing with the faculty and students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In this new era of globalization, it is great that we have programs like these to disseminate among our international colleagues.”

Furthermore, the agreement also helps the School of Pharmacy intensify its nationally and internationally recognized programs in drug discovery and development, facilitating research collaborations in areas such as microbiology, antibiotics, drugs of abuse, and oncology.

“Faculty and students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University are looking forward to future educational, research, and scientific exchanges with the School of Pharmacy, as we share many common scientific interests, including research in medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences,” says Fu. “We hope to use this agreement to create favorable circumstances at both schools for postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars.”

Established in 2000, the School of Pharmacy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of the youngest and rapidly growing schools of pharmacy and research institutions in China. It occupies approximately 160,000 square feet of campus building space and enrolls more than 70 students each year in its master’s and doctoral programs, making it one of China’s leading institutions for pharmacy education and pharmaceutical research. The School has developed a wide range of high quality scientific programs as well as an innovation-driven education and research environment.

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