Lyla White, a graduating Pharm.D. student at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, will receive the University Scholar accolade after two years of research through the University Scholar Program.
Pharmacy/Biology building on May 21, 2024. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)
Lyla White is graduating from the UConn School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SoPPS) this May with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, and White has been very active within the university throughout her six years at UConn.
White was an Honors Scholar throughout her time at UConn and was previously announced at a University Scholar.
White was also on the UConn Climbing Team, starting out as a member before moving up to treasurer her sophomore year. She then moved to vice president of the Climbing Team her junior year, and finally for her senior year, became the Climbing Team president.
White was also the co-founder and co-chair of the Immunization Committee at the SoPPS where she helped create opportunities for students to go out and partner with the community for immunization practice.
She was also a part of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) as a member before becoming treasurer for two years. During her time in APhA, White went to the APhA annual meeting in her second year, where she was able to meet pharmacists and student pharmacists from across the nation and participate in advocacy for the pharmacy profession on a national level.
Another organization White was a part of was the Student College of Clinical Pharmacy (SCCP), UConn chapter, where she competed in a couple of national competitions for UConn such as the Clinical Knowledge Competition. White was also part of the Clinical Research Challenge where she and other pharmacy students designed a clinical trial and competed at the national level, making it to the final round of the challenge.
White also took part in the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) where she was on the board as a chapter coordinator.
She also took part in the Industry Pharmacy Organization (IPhO) and took part in the Value of Industry Pharmacists (VIP) Case Competition each year. The VIP Case Competition is an annual professional development competition that has participants create a product development plan to bring a novel molecule to market.
White has also been involved in research since her freshman year. White was selected as a Holster scholar as a freshman, a program supporting students to work on a summer research project based on their own research proposal. Her project involved using 3D printing technology to create drug tablets with multiple active ingredients at personalized doses.
White ended up getting the Supply Award from the Office of Undergraduate Research to start her next project before getting a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund Award (SURF) to fund another summer project. Through this work, she investigated the impact of different storage conditions on the stability of commercial aspirin tablets, including a simulation of keeping them in a bathroom with high heat and humidity. White used this research for her honors thesis, which she completed when she got her B.S. in Pharmacy Studies.
White applied for the University Scholar designation for a project she took on for during her second Pharm.D. year about compounding an aspirin suspension for patients with trouble swallowing and ended up getting it.
White also received a national award, the Gateway to Research award from the American Foundation of Pharmaceutical Education, to support her work.
When White was selected for the University Scholar Program, she was ecstatic.
"When I opened up my email and saw that it said congratulations, I was really excited," White said. "The first people I called were my parents. I was especially excited to tell my dad, because he supported me a lot during the application process."
White then contacted her other big supporters.
"I was excited to tell everyone who was going to be on my University Scholar team," White said. "That was [Robin] Bogner, [Bodhi] Chaudhuri, and [Youssef] Bessada."
Becoming a University Scholar is very significant to her.
"It means that I was able to do research that's meaningful, see it out to the highest level I could, and make a proposal that was mine," White said.
One of the roadblocks came when White started working on the lab's machine for high performance liquid chromatography. There were a ton of error messages, but when White called the company who made the machine, they said that they had never heard of that machine because it was too old.
"I thought that the initial step would be done, but it ended up taking me a lot of the spring semester to do those initial tests because I had to find another machine to work on and work my assay around that machine," White said.
White finally found an answer though.
"I was very lucky another professor, Na Li, offered to let me use the machine in her lab, and one of her graduate students helped me work on it," White said.
In the end, White found an aspirin suspension recipe that was stable after 6 months of storage under different conditions and was able to present her findings at the annual Midyear Meeting for the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP).
White will get her recognition on May 2 at the Honors Medals Ceremony in the Jorgensen.
