OUR VALUES

We will uphold the same values shared on the campus of UC San Diego. We will achieve our mission by being distinctive and by using our comparative advantage. The values that define UC San Diego create an environment and a culture where:

• Excellence in teaching, research, patient care, and a people- and service-oriented culture that supports learning, scholarly work, and public service are the norm
• Collaborative and interdisciplinary activities lead to discoveries, technologies, cures, scholarship, and creative works that advance and enrich society
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion enable academics, students, and staff to excel and provide opportunity for all to succeed
• An entrepreneurial spirit leads to agility, taking risks, and creating innovative approaches to solving problems is encouraged
• Public engagement, sustainability, integrity, and ethics are core principles guiding our activities

School-Wide Initiatives

Initiative 1: Graduate programs

We will assess and develop master's degree programs related to drug development and product management, informatics, and pharmacogenomics. We will transform our current PharmD/PhD program into the first NIH training grant supported PharmD/PhD program. Scientific pathways would focus on areas in which students could leverage dual degrees to advance translational research. Areas could include pharmacogenomics, marine natural science, pharmaceutical outcomes, and pharmacoeconomics.

Initiative 2: Informatics and Data Science for Big Data

We will build school-wide programs using informatics and data science tools to integrate data and processes from drug discovery through clinical practice. Big data sourced from clinical data (e.g., health records, drug claims), personal data (e.g., wearable devices), public health data (e.g., post-marketing surveillance, immunization records), and molecular data (e.g., multi-omics, biobanks) can be further processed using artificial intelligence (using machine learning and algorithms to improve processes) and intelligence amplification (amplifying human intelligence by making data more understandable and actionable) to achieve precision in diagnosis and optimal drug therapy.

Initiative 3: Pharmacogenomics

Pharmacogenomics testing may improve our ability to predict an individual's response to therapy or the development of adverse reactions. Improvements in technology have enabled the use of genome-wide association studies in place of the candidate gene approach to associate specific genetic variants or quantitative differences in gene expression with drug response. Despite the growing body of research in pharmacogenomics, the clinical utility remains to be explored and must be validated. UC San Diego is poised to contribute to this field from discovery to clinical implementation and education. We aim to further develop educational program(s), service opportunities and research involving interdisciplinary teams.

Initiative 4: Optimize Drug Therapy Response

We will conduct investigations to optimize drug therapy and improve patient-centered care by employing advanced methodologies uniquely available at SSPPS. We strive to improve our understanding of the variability in individual patient drug response by utilizing a multi-pronged approach that includes areas such as proteomics, metabolomics, pharmacokinetic modeling, and bioinformatics. We plan to cultivate awareness of our complementary faculty expertise across our three divisions and in the greater UC San Diego community, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number and impact of inter-division collaborative projects.