UNC’s Robert Blouin to receive 51st annual Lakey Award, deliver keynote April 1

UNC Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Blouin Wayne State’s Alpha Chi chapter of the national Rho Chi Pharmacy Honor Society has selected Robert A. Blouin, PharmD, Executive Vice Chancellor, Provost and Bryson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to receive the 2019 Roland T. Lakey Award. Blouin will spend Monday, April 1, at the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences to meet with pharmaceutical sciences faculty and students, receive the award and deliver a keynote speech.

The award presentation and Blouin’s lecture, "A Student Call to Leadership: A Personal Journey,” will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. in the WSU Applebaum auditorium, 259 Mack Ave., Detroit. All are welcome to attend.

Each year since 1963, the Roland T. Lakey Award, which is named in honor of the college’s founding dean, is conferred by the honor students of Rho Chi to recognize an individual who has significantly impacted the profession of pharmacy through research or other scholarly contributions in the basic or clinical sciences. Previous honorees include Nobel Laureate Julius Axelrod, Nobel finalist Hiroshi Maeda, Robert Langer, Laurence Hurley, Marie Chisholm-Burns, Philip Low, Richard Silverman, William Jusko, James Gillette, Barbara Wells and Rakesh Jain, whose seminal contributors have shaped our profession.

Blouin is noted for his leadership of national discussions on educational issues of clinical pharmaceutical scientist training, particularly at the graduate level. He has been extensively involved in launching a transformation in the professional and graduate curricula at UNC coined the Educational Renaissance. His own research interests include studying the effect of disease and altered physiologic status on the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and metabolism of drugs.

Before achieving his current position, Blouin was dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, where under his leadership the faculty research portfolio increased from $2 million in 2002 to $36 million in 2016. He was also instrumental in establishing and directing the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, and he led a cutting-edge effort to find creative ways to accelerate change in education and health care.

Prior to UNC, he was a faculty member and administrator at his alma mater, the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. As the executive director of the Office for Economic Development and Innovations Management, he served as the College of Pharmacy representative on all issues external to the University of Kentucky and those relating to economic development of the pharmaceutical sciences. He also represented the college on several statewide biotechnology initiatives and has worked to advance faculty-based intellectual property.

A native of Massachusetts, Blouin earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and a PharmD from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Maureen. They have a daughter, a son and four granddaughters.

For more information about this event, please contact Latoya Rice at 313-577-5416 or ab4355@wayne.edu.

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