Author: [AUTHOR] Published on 8/1/2021 12:00:00 AM

Robert Stratford, PhD, Associate Professor, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana

What Professional Accomplishment Are You Most Proud Of?
Securing a constant stream of funding as an academic scientist following a 23-year career as a pharmaceutical industry scientist. I have had to learn the art and technical skill of writing successful grant proposals, which entailed, and still does, learning how to graciously accept rejection and develop the tenacity to persevere.

Who Has Inspired You in Your Career?
In my early career, I was inspired by the work of Dr. Rob Borchardt’s group at the University of Kansas (including Drs. Ken Audus and Ismael Hidalgo) and Upjohn Company scientists (Drs. Tom Raub and Phil Burton) regarding the interplay of epithelial barrier biochemical and drug physiochemical properties influencing drug permeation across such barriers. In addition, the seminal work of Gordon Amidon’s group at the University of Michigan (including Drs. Dave Fleisher and Pat Sinko) that brought a chemical engineering component to the biopharmaceutics of oral drug absorption was inspirational. Later in my career, I have been inspired by the work of Drs. Maciej Zamek-Gliszczynski, Sandy Pang, Swati Nagar, Kory Kalvass, and Yuichi Sugiyama regarding carrier-mediated drug transport.

What Has Been the Greatest Challenge in Your Career?
Transitioning from conducting science in the pharmaceutical industry to its conduct in an academic environment has been the greatest challenge. Different communication structures in these two environments is a good example. In industry, succinct and concept-dense presentations are the norm, but would be ineffective in a teaching environment. Transitioning from “presenting” to “teaching” was challenging, but has been highly rewarding. Written communication structure is also quite different. Careful development of one’s ideas (hypothesis and rationale) is crucial in academia; whereas, such ideas are most frequently orally (industry) versus publications (academic) in scientific journals are also quite different.

How Do You Keep Focused and Motivated?
The desire to continuously learn is a strong motivating force. Collaborating with pharmacologists and biologists over the years, I have experienced focused efforts over a period of up to several months in order to contextualize their work in a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modeling framework, which is a lot of fun.

What’s One Thing People Would be Surprised to Know About You?
I am a registered member of the Comanche Indian Tribe.

Dr. Stratford has been a member of ASCPT since 2018.