Seven Innovative Projects Awarded 2026 Koda Kimble Seed Award
Seven innovative projects poised to advance the mission of the UCSF School of Pharmacy in new ways have been selected to receive the 2026 Mary Anne Koda-Kimble Seed Award for Innovation.
Administered by the Center for Collaborative Innovation (CCI) that is led by professor Su Guo, PhD, the annual program this year will fund $65,000 worth of projects for which there is no ready or traditional source of funding. Awards are offered in two categories: individual projects and cross-departmental collaborations.
The award honors the legacy of Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD, who was the school’s dean from 1998 to 2012 and supported new directions in science, education and patient care. The Seed Award for Innovation was established in 2012 through a $1 million endowment from the Joseph and Vera Long Foundation.
Collaborative Innovation Projects
| Principal Investigator | Department | Project |
|---|---|---|
| Safwaan Khan | Pharmaceutical Chemistry | Conversion of TGFβ-Mediated Immunosuppression into CAR-T Cell Activation in Glioblastoma |
| Henry Scott | Pharmaceutical Chemistry | Electrically Refunctionalizing Cardiac Scar Tissue Using Orthogonal Gap Junctions |
| Eunsol Yang, PharmD, PhD | Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences | Characterizing patient heterogeneity in longitudinal glycemic outcomes in youth-onset type 2 diabetes to guide optimized treatment |
Individual Innovation Projects
| Principal Investigator | Department | Project |
|---|---|---|
| Emma Gunderson, EdD | Clinical Pharmacy | Building a Business Model for a Translational Drug Research Institute |
| Conan MacDougall, PharmD, MAS | Clinical Pharmacy | Leveraging Large Language Model (LLM) Capabilities to Facilitate Adoption of Evidence-based Learning Strategies Among Pharmacy Students |
| Daniel Weisgerber, PhD | Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences | Microfluidic Aggregation of Amyloid Beta for the Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Drug Testing |
| Klaus Yserentant, PhD | Pharmaceutical Chemistry | Extended rhodamine binder scaffolds as platform for next generation fluorescent labels |