Editor Announcements

Arlington, VA—AAPS is pleased to announce Yongchao Su, Ph.D., has assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of AAPS Open, the first open access publication dedicated to the pharmaceutical sciences. 

He will manage peer review of manuscripts under consideration by the journal, collaborate with the publisher and AAPS to select Associate Editors and the Editorial Board, and commission submissions in areas of interest and scope. In addition, he will work on journal development with the goal of furthering the journal’s impact and reach, and advancing the field of drug discovery, development, and regulation.

"I'm excited to bring my interdisciplinary expertise to the role of Editor-in-Chief of AAPS Open," said Dr. Su. "As AAPS' flagship open access publication, this peer-reviewed journal is a pivotal source of credible pharmaceutical science, offering excellent visibility and accessibility."

"AAPS Open provides the pharmaceutical communities access to new and innovative scientific thinking," said Gopi Shankar, Ph.D., M.B.A., FAAPS, the 2024 AAPS President. "Dr. Su's background, which bridges academia and industrial sciences, along with his expertise in elucidating the molecular mechanisms of drug delivery and stability for product development, will be an invaluable asset in his role as Editor-in-Chief."

Dr. Su is a Senior Principal Scientist in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Clinical Supply at Merck & Co, Inc. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Connecticut, and Purdue University. He has received academic training in structural biophysics and brings nearly 10 years of industrial experience, spanning discovery, formulation, and analytical functions. As a researcher, he has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and has been involved with the editorial advisory boards of Pharmaceutical Research, Molecular Pharmaceutics, and the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In addition, Dr. Su served as an editor for the protein section of Amino Acids.

Currently, he serves on the Physical Analysis Expert Committee of the United States Pharmacopeia. Most recently, he served as Chair of the AAPS Career Development Committee. 

Xiuling Lu, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
School of Pharmacy, University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269, United States
Email: xiuling.lu@uconn.edu

Xiuling Lu, Professor at the University of Connecticut, Associate Director of Center for Pharmaceutical Processing Research, Past Chair of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology & Education, received her Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She was appointed as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2008 to 2011 prior to joining the School of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Lu’s research is focused on innovative nanotechnologies that target difficult-to-treat cancers, optimization and evaluation of drug formulations and pharmaceutical processing, as well as the use of versatile imaging tools to improve pharmaceutical product quality. Her research has been supported by NIH, American Cancer Society, NSF, FDA, industry etc. Dr. Lu has published more than 85 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals. The innovative research has resulted in 4 issued US patents and 4 pending patent applications. One of the patents was licensed to a startup pharmaceutical company. Dr. Lu is an Editor of AAPS Open, and also serving on the editorial board of AAPS PharmSciTech, Pharmaceutical Research, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, and Drug Delivery and Translational Research. Dr. Lu received American Association of University Professors-UConn Excellence in Research and Creativity: Early Career Award in 2016 and Dean Robert L. McCarthy Faculty Service Award in 2019 as well as 2023 Research Advising Award. Dr. Lu was elected as the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences (AAPS) Fellow in 2023. 

Mo Maniruzzaman, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery
School of Pharmacy, the University of Mississippi
University, MI 38677, United States
Email: mmaniruz@olemiss.edu

Dr Mo Maniruzzaman is the Chair and Professor of Pharmaceutics & Drug Delivery, and Research Professor in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (RIPS) at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy and leads the newly established Pharmaceutical Engineering and 3D Printing (PharmE3D) Lab there. Prior to this, he was the Bauerle Centennial Professorship Fellow and Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at The University of Texas at Austin, College of Pharmacy (2019-2023), Lecturer in Pharmaceutics/Drug Delivery (2017-2019) and a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex (2016-2017). He received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Greenwich, UK with no corrections (000422158 RDC/12/M-3/14.8) and with two accompanying awards including the Vice Chancellor’s Award in 2013 for the outstanding performance. Mo is the youngest person at the age of 34 to become the Chair and Full Professor at any R1 university and a nationally ranked School of Pharmacy in the USA. He is also the youngest PhD holder (PhD awarded at the age of 23) in the United Kingdom from any overseas community. The Maniruzzaman Lab has received more than 25 prestigious awards for the outstanding academic/scholarly work including International Collaboration Grant (ICG) 2024, Texas Health Catalyst (THC) Award 2023, the 2021 NIPTE Rising Star Scholarship Award, Pharmacy Educator of the Year Award 2023, MDPI Pharmaceutics Best Paper Award, and Research4Impact 2020 to name a few. 

He has extensive research experience in additive manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing/bioprinting), advanced drug delivery, and recently medical robotics and space medicines. This is reflected by authorship of more than 94 published papers (mostly Q1 journals), 25 issued patents and patent applications, 3 books, 15 book chapters, and more than 50 conference presentations. His lab has invented various proprietary technologies such as DosePlus, CoM3D, CoMIDEx, SPEED, SMART, MAGiC, and MeET some of which have already been licensed to multiple pharmaceutical companies such as CoM3D Limited, DosePlus Therapeutics Inc. Also, his lab research has led to an FDA registered commercial product recently i.e., ChitoTruss (Septum Solutions LLC) which are currently being used in clinical settings. He is an Editor of AAPS Open and Associate Editor of Heliyon - Pharmaceutical Science, Pharmacoloy and Toxicology section (IF 4) and serves on the Editorial Board of multiple international journals including AAPS PharmSciTech. He is a member of the AAPS Nanotechnology Community Leadership as well as AAPS Editorial Content Committee (ECC). Dr Maniruzzaman has secured multiple federal (NIH/FDA, NASA, USAID, HRSA) and non-federal (foundation, industry) grants. 

Dana E. Moseson, PhD

Senior Principal Scientist

Drug Product Design

Pfizer Inc.,

Groton, CT 06340, United States

E-mail: Dana.Moseson@pfizer.com

Dr. Dana Moseson is a Senior Principal Scientist working in the Formulation and Process Design group of the Drug Product Design department at Pfizer in Groton, CT, where she specializes in the formulation design, characterization, and manufacturing of early-stage clinical drug products using amorphous solid dispersion technology. She has over 10 years of industry experience developing formulations for early phase NCEs. Dana received a PhD in Industrial and Physical Pharmacy from Purdue University, where her research under Professor Lynne Taylor focused on the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of hot melt extrusion processing to produce ASDs, as well as investigating the in vitro biopharmaceutics implications of residual crystallinity in ASDs. During her postdoctoral research, she investigated the physical stability and dissolution performance implications of atomic layer coating on amorphous solid dispersion particles. Dana has received several research awards including the PhRMA Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery (2021-2022), National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology & Education Outstanding Student Research Award (2020), Jenkins/Knevel Award for Excellence in Research (2020), International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council of the Americas (IPEC) Foundation Graduate Student Award (2019), and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2018-2020), and was honored as a Top Reviewer for 2023 from Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has authored more than 20 publications on amorphous solid dispersion formulation design, hot melt extrusion processing design, crystallization, particle engineering, characterization, and in vitro dissolution performance of supersaturating formulations, and has presented at numerous scientific meetings and conferences. She is an Editor of AAPS Open and serves on the editorial advisory board of Molecular Pharmaceutics. Additionally, she is the guest editor of the 2025 Giants in Pharmaceutical Sciences dedicated issue honoring Professor Lynne Taylor.

Chun-Wan Yen, Ph.D.

Senior Principal Scientist

the Synthetic Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences

Genentech, Inc.

South San Francisco, CA 94080, United States

Email: yen.chunwan@gene.com

Chun-Wan Yen received her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from National Taiwan University. She then pursued her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Following her Ph.D., she was awarded an ORISE fellowship and conducted postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2015, Chun-Wan began her industrial career at Merck Research Laboratory from 2015-2018. She is currently a Senior Principal Scientist in the Synthetic Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences at Genentech. She is the CMC lead for parenteral formulation development. Her research interests include drug delivery for exotic modalities such as oligonucleotides, peptides, and mRNAs to support undruggable targets. Chun-Wan has published 40 peer-reviewed papers and holds three patents.