The University of Toledo College of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

09/18/2026

🎓 Freshman or sophomore:

In this video, we’re showing you how to find your advisor and connect with them when you need guidance along the way. Your advisor can be a great resource for questions about classes, your academic path and making the most of your time at the College of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. 💊📚

A special thank you to our advisor, Heidi Spence, for joining us in this video! 💙

🎵 Music: Dreaming
🎧 Musician: Silicon Estate

09/17/2026

✨ A day in the life of a Cosmetic Science & Formulation Design student! 🧴🧪

From the classroom to the lab, see what it’s really like to study cosmetic science and turn your ideas into real products. 👀💄

Want to see more behind-the-scenes content? Follow along on TikTok! 🎥✨

👉 Check out our TikTok:

09/16/2026

🧪✨ Women in Science Wednesday: Fiona Wood ✨🧪

Meet Dr. Fiona Wood, an Australian plastic surgeon and researcher whose groundbreaking work has helped transform the treatment of severe burns.

Dr. Wood is known for developing spray-on skin, an innovative technique that uses a patient’s own skin cells to help treat burn wounds and promote healing. Her research and contributions to burn medicine have made a lasting impact on how serious burn injuries can be treated.

🔬 Science connection: Element #11 — Sodium (Na)

Sodium is an essential element found throughout the human body and plays important roles in fluid balance, nerve signaling, and cell function—all processes that are especially important when the body is recovering from a serious injury.

From the periodic table to the operating room, science is helping us understand—and improve—the way the human body heals. 💙

09/15/2026

🧪 Trivia Tuesday!

Before there were pill presses, blenders or modern drug-making equipment… pharmacists had the mortar and pestle.

🤔 How far back does the mortar and pestle date?

A. 500 years
B. 1,000 years
C. 5,000 years
D. More than 10,000 years

Drop your guess below! 👇

Answer: D! 🥣

Mortar-and-pestle tools date back to prehistoric times, with archaeological examples thousands of years old. They were used to grind and mix everything from food and spices to medicinal ingredients. The mortar and pestle eventually became one of the most recognizable symbols of the apothecary and pharmacy profession.

09/14/2026

🧴✨ MAJOR MONDAY: What if your college lab experience included creating 50+ real cosmetic products?

If you’re fascinated by how beauty and personal-care products are created, Cosmetic Science & Formulation Design could be the major for you!

As a bachelor’s student, you’ll get two years of hands-on laboratory experience and create 50+ products while learning not only about individual ingredients, but also how they work together—and how they interact with the body.

From lotions, shampoos and conditioners to shaving gels and more, students gain practical formulation experience that can help prepare them to step directly into the cosmetic industry.

And the opportunities don’t stop with the bachelor’s degree! 🎓

Students can take advantage of a pipeline into our completely online Cosmetic Science master’s program, allowing eligible students to begin graduate-level coursework while completing their bachelor’s degree. That means you can get a head start on your master’s and continue building your expertise without putting your career on hold.

🔬 Interested in research? There are opportunities to get involved in research projects and even present your work at conferences.

Whether you see yourself developing the next great product, working with cosmetic ingredients, or exploring research and formulation science, this major gives you the opportunity to turn your curiosity into hands-on experience.

💄 Science + creativity + formulation = Cosmetic Science & Formulation Design.

09/11/2026

🎉 Welcome, Prep Students!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Prep Student Meet & Greet! It was so great to see our students connecting, getting to know each other, and kicking off the year together. 💙

And because every successful meet & greet needs snacks… 🍪🍕 feel free to stop by the Student Resource Center on Main Campus and grab some cookies and pizza!

We’re excited to have you here and can’t wait to see all you accomplish this year! 🧪💊✨

09/10/2026

🧠 How do scientists figure out what psychoactive drugs actually do to the brain?

It may involve more than microscopes and brain scans.

In a recent Toledo Blade article, Logan Kountz, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, explains how researchers can use behavioral “fingerprints” to better understand how different drugs affect the brain.

“I have found that these drugs do not produce identical behavioral fingerprints.”

Fentanyl, M**A and other psychoactive drugs can produce distinct patterns of behavioral changes—even when some drugs have similar chemical structures.

By combining behavioral measurements with computer-based statistical methods, researchers can identify which drugs produce similar patterns and which ones stand apart. But for Kountz, that’s only part of the story.

The next question: What’s happening inside the brain? 🧠

Learn more about Kountz’s research and how zebrafish are helping scientists better understand psychoactive drugs in The Blade.

Have you ever wondered how scientists know what a drug does to your brain? You might imagine scientists looking through microscopes or studying brain scans. ...

09/09/2026

🔬✨ Women in Science Wednesday!

What if we could slow light down to a crawl… and even stop it?

Meet Lene Vestergaard Hau, a Danish physicist whose groundbreaking research made that sound like science fiction a reality. 🌟

In 1999, Hau and her team slowed a pulse of light to just 17 meters per second—incredibly slow compared with light’s usual speed of about 300 million meters per second! 🤯

Using an ultracold cloud of atoms, her research demonstrated remarkable ways that light can interact with matter. She later showed that light could even be brought to a complete stop and stored in an atomic medium before being released again.

🧪 Her work has helped scientists better understand quantum physics and the fascinating relationship between light and matter.

And what makes this especially cool? Her research connects beautifully to neon, element #10, which is famous for its glowing interaction with light. 💡

🌟 Science reminds us that sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries happen when we ask a simple question: “What if?”

09/08/2026

🌿 Student Tip Tuesdays: Take a Moment to Pause

College life can get busy. Sometimes you just need a few quiet minutes to reset, breathe, and recharge.

Did you know we have a Quiet Room available for students in the Wolf Center? 🧘‍♀️✨

Whether you want to:
🙏 Pray or reflect
🧘 Meditate
🧩 Work on a puzzle
📚 Take a quiet break between classes
💭 Simply step away from the hustle and bustle for a few minutes

…the Quiet Room is here for you.

📍 Find it in the Wolf Center, diagonally across from the Kroger Professional Development Lab.

Because taking care of yourself is part of being a successful student, too. 💙

09/04/2026

🔬 What if we could understand exactly what synthetic opioids are doing inside the body—and find ways to reverse that damage?

That’s the kind of question researchers at the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences are working to answer.

We’re celebrating a major research accomplishment! 🎉 Isaac T. Schiefer, Ph.D., Professor of Medicinal and Biological Chemistry and Director of the Center for Drug Design and Development (CD3), has received a $455,827 NIH R56 award, co-funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The project, “Photoaffinity and Multi-Omic Analysis of Targets Pathways Driving Synthetic Opioid-Induced Toxicity and Reversal,” will use innovative chemical probes and multi-omic approaches to identify the molecular targets and pathways driving toxicity from ultra-potent synthetic opioids—and investigate how those harmful effects can be reversed.

The project builds on Dr. Schiefer’s ongoing synthetic opioid and CounterACT research program and is part of the NIH’s Chemical Countermeasures Research Program.

Dr. Schiefer serves as Principal Investigator, with Frederick Williams and Robert McCullumsmith as Co-Investigators.

🧪 This is research happening right here at UT—and it has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of one of today’s important public health challenges.

Congratulations to Dr. Schiefer and the entire research team! 👏🔬