Program overview
The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences offers Master of Science and PhD programs in pharmaceutical sciences that are designed to educate the next generation of scientists in the use, development and emerging technologies to advance research in the fields of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. These programs prepare graduates for research and active scholarship that will extend the knowledge base of pharmaceutical sciences in the areas of drug target discovery, drug testing and drug delivery. Graduates of the program will be prepared for careers in a variety of scientific fields in industry and academia, as well as for healthcare leadership positions.
Degrees offered
MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences
- focused on foundational and technical knowledge to prepare students with workforce-ready skills designed to be completed in 1.5 years
PhD in Pharmaceutical Science
- interdisciplinary, focused on preparing students to become independent investigators that are ready to tackle complex biomedical problems
- designed to be completed in approximately 5 years
Research opportunities
Our department is home to faculty members with a diverse set of research interests that span nearly every aspect of pharmaceutical investigation, including disease pathogenesis, molecular diagnostics, drug-target identification, drug design, pharmaceutics, biomarker identification and clinical development. Particular disease areas of focus include muscular dystrophy, cancer, Lyme disease, bacterial infections and autoimmune disorders. Our faculty are world-renowned leaders in their fields, as reflected by their peer-reviewed publication records and their high levels of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), private philanthropic organizations as well the pharmaceutical industry. Students entering the PhD program typically perform rotations in three faculty labs prior to selecting their dissertation advisor in the spring of their first year. Project teams are typically composed of a multidisciplinary group of faculty that may include chemists, neuroscientists, geneticists, biomedical engineers and clinicians. As such, it is not unusual for PhD students to have a secondary research advisor in a different academic department. While not required, MS students may also affiliate with a research lab and participate in shorter-term research projects.
Research labs
The newly constructed Binghamton University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science opened in 2017 with significant support ($60 million) from the state of New York. The school is housed in a recently completed facility that contains ~100,000 square feet of space and provides two floors for research laboratories and collaborative spaces (~50,000 square feet in total). Each faculty lab has dedicated space tailored to the faculty member’s particular research focus. The department has been outfitted with numerous “core” areas (shared research space) that contain state-of-the-art equipment for pharmacological, biological, and chemical research. Major pieces of equipment include: Orbitrap Q-Exactive HF Mass Spectrometer, Waters Acuity UPLC (H-Class) with Xevo TQD triple quadrupole mass detector, Waters Autopurification HPLC system with SQD2 quadrupole MS, Bruker Avance III HD 400 mHz NMR, GE Typhoon 5 fluorescent and NIR scanner, Leica DMi8 CEL Advanced Confocal Microscope, Amersham Typhoon 5 BioMolecular Imager and the MSD Meso QuickPlex SQ120.
Our animal facility is registered with the USDA and the New York State Department of Health, and is accredited by the American Association for the Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). Animals are housed in dedicated colony rooms adjacent to testing and experimental areas. Staff in the animal facilities includes a full-time veterinarian and a veterinary assistant, along with numerous laboratory animal caretakers.
After you graduate
Graduates of the MS program will be particularly well-suited for the life-sciences sector and technology services organizations. PhD graduates will be prepared for academic, government and industrial research positions. Training in entrepreneurism will also play a critical role in these programs, preparing graduates to address the rapid growth in biomedical and pharmaceutical startup companies and to provide consultation and technical advisory services to law firms, venture capitalists and the financial services industry. Graduates may also find themselves working in government in areas such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
