This is the first installment of the PDA Letter's series featuring the winners of the 2021 Honor Awards, which were presented during the Honor Awards Ceremony at the 2022 PDA Annual Meeting in Dallas. PDA thanks all of the recipients for their contributions to the Association.
Featured below are the winners of the Martin VanTrieste Pharmaceutical Science, Michael S. Korcynski, and Edward Smith Packaging Science awards. Next time: Distinguished Service Award winners.
Martin VanTrieste Pharmaceutical Science Award
Established in honor of long-time contributor and Chair, Martin VanTrieste, this award honors outstanding contributions to the advancement of pharmaceutical science.
Richard L. Friedman is Deputy Director, Office of Manufacturing Quality, which is part of the compliance office in FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). This position includes oversight of regulatory action decisions relating to manufacturing site acceptability, and promoting sound regulatory policy development. Mr. Friedman has authored several publications on topics including sterile drugs and quality systems. Mr. Friedman has been a faculty member in Temple University School of Pharmacy’s QA/RA graduate program since 2003. Prior to joining FDA in 1990, Mr. Friedman worked in the toxicology research division of Parke-Davis. Mr. Friedman received his B.S. in Biology with honors from Montclair State University in 1989, and his M.S. in Microbiology from Georgetown University School of Medicine in May, 2001
Michael S. Korczynski Award
This Award is presented to recognize contributions to PDA’s international activities. It is named for Michael S. Korczynski in recognition of the contributions he made toward the development of PDA’s international activities.
PDA Annex 1 Team
Gabriele Gori, ThermoFisher is Site Quality Head at ThermoFisher. He is currently Vice-Chair of the PDA Science Advisory Board, Co-Chair of the Audit & Inspections IG, Co-chair of Annex 1 response team, PDA/EFPIA representative for the Annex 1 topic at the EMA-IWG meeting with the interested parties and member of the Kilmer Conference Industry Advisory Board.
Hal Baseman is the Chief Operating Officer at ValSource Inc. He has been the past Chair of the PDA Board of Directors, Co-chair or leader of PDA SAB, the Process Validation IG, PDA Technical Reports No. 22 (revision), 44, and 60, and Aseptic Processing Points to Consider task forces. He is currently a member of the PDA TRI faculty, Co-chair of Annex 1 response team, and Co-lead for the Kilmer Conference Regulatory Collaboration team.
Edward Smith Packaging Science Award
This award was created to recognize outstanding contributions to Pharmaceutical Packaging Science. It is presented in honor of Edward Smith and his long-term contributions to pharmaceutical packaging science.
Fran L. DeGrazio, West Pharmaceutical Services
Fran DeGrazio has 35+ years of experience in the parenteral drug packaging and delivery industry with extensive expertise in components and prefillable systems for combination products. She has held numerous technical roles at West, including R&D, Quality & Regulatory, Technical Customer Support, Analytical Laboratories and Scientific Affairs. In her most recent role as Chief Scientific Officer, she is responsible to leverage scientific and regulatory understanding across the enterprise.
Fran has been active in the PDA for over 30 years with her most recent involvement being the PDA Zero Visible particle core team and associated technical report and the PDA Combination Products task force steering committee.