Research, clinical departments each celebrate two faculty promotions

Four female faculty members were able to celebrate the end of Women’s History Month with well-earned promotions at the MUSC College of Pharmacy. Two women in the college’s research faculty were promoted to full professor and two women in its clinical faculty were promoted to associate professor.

• Anna-Liisa Nieminen and Danyelle Townsend will assume the rank of professor of drug discovery and biomedical sciences effective July 1.
• Emmeline Tran and Erin Weeda will assume the rank of associate professor of clinical pharmacy and outcome sciences effective July 1. 

Dr. Nieminen has a long-standing interest in research related to mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction employing various models of oxidative stress, photodynamic therapy, sensitization of pancreatic cancer to conventional chemotherapy, and applying nanoparticles to treat head and neck cancers.  Her most recent research focuses on iron-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction related to liver injury.

Dr. Townsend’s laboratory combines proteomics and analytical biochemistry to identify molecular targets of oxidative and nitrosative stress to determine how redox signaling impacts cellular response. Her research on the redox proteome and associated pathways created a platform for drug discovery and redox biomarker development that has led to multiple clinical trials.

Dr. Tran is an internal medicine clinical specialist at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. She completed her undergraduate work and pharmacy school at the University of Utah, and residencies in pharmacy practice (PGY-1) and internal medicine (PGY-2) at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Dr. Weeda is a research health scientist at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. After earning her Pharm.D. at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy in 2014, she served a post-graduate year one residency at Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center in Houston and then as Health Economics and Outcomes Research Fellow at the University of Connecticut and Hartford Hospital.