Joseph T. DiPiro, Pharm.D.

Dr. Joseph T. DiPiro is Dean, Professor and Archie. O. McCalley Chair at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, Richmond, Virginia.  He received his BS in pharmacy (Honors College) from the University of Connecticut and Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Kentucky.  He served a residency at the University of Kentucky Medical Center and a fellowship in Clinical Immunology at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to his service at VCU he was Executive Dean at the South Carolina College of Pharmacy (2005-2014) and Professor and Department Head at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy (1981-2004).

He is Past-President of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and Past Chair of the Council of Deans. He has served as President of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. He is a Fellow of the College and has served on the Research Institute Board of Trustees.  He has been a member of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, having served on the Commission on Therapeutics and the Task Force on Science.  In 2002, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy selected Dr. DiPiro for the Robert K. Chalmers Distinguished Educator Award.  He has also received the Russell R. Miller Literature Award and the Education Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, the Award for Sustained Contributions to the Literature from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and was named in 2013 as the national Rho Chi Distinguished Lecturer.  Dr. DiPiro was elected a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. DiPiro served as Editor of The American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education for 12 years. He is an editor for Pharmacotherapy: A Pathophysiologic Approach, now in its 11th edition.  He is also the author of Concepts in Clinical Pharmacokinetics and Editor of the Encyclopedia of Clinical Pharmacy.  He has published over 200 journal papers, books, book chapters, and editorials in academic and professional journals, mainly related to antibiotics, drug use in surgery, and pharmacy education.

J. Russell May

J. Russell May, Pharm.D., FASHP is a Clinical Professor and Associate Department Head,Clinical and Administrative Pharmacy at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. Prior to his move to academia full time in 2003, Dr. May was a drug information specialist and clinical manager in the Pharmacy Department at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Health System for 22 years, including serving as Director of Pharmacy from 1998 to 2003. Since graduating from the University of Kentucky Pharm.D. and Hospital Residency Programs in 1981, Dr. May has focused his practice in the areas of drug information and drug policy development. He currently serves on the Residency Advisory Council for the PGY-1 and three PGY-2 (critical care, oncology, and pediatrics) programs at Augusta University Health System (co-sponsored by the University of Georgia). In 2007, he was named Teacher of the Year at the University of Georgia, College of Pharmacy. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and has served on the ASHP Executive Committee of the Section of Clinical Specialists and the Commission on Credentialing. He is a past president of the Georgia Society of Health System Pharmacists. Dr. May has served as a visiting professor at Misr International University in Cairo, Egypt, and assisted with the development of its Drug Information Center. Dr. May was also the recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Drug Information Practitioner Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy.

Prof. Phani Tej Adidam 

Executive Management Education Professor.

Director: CBA International Initiatives.

Department: Marketing & Management.

Education
Ph.D. – Texas Tech University

Teaching
Professor Adidam teaches International Marketing, Sales Management, and Channels of Distribution to undergraduate Business Administration students, and Marketing Strategy to MBA and Executive MBA students. His teaching interests also include Strategic Brand Management and Competitive Intelligence. Students in the Executive MBA program have awarded him the Distinguished Executive MBA Professor Award in 2010, 2008, 2005, 2004 and 2000. In 2000, he also received the Outstanding MBA Professor of the Year Award. In 2008, he received the University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award, and in 2007, he received the UNO Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award. Professor Adidam is also on the faculty of the Aalto University School of Business in Finland, and has taught at more than 12 business schools around the world.

Research
Professor Adidam’s research interests include marketing strategy, decision confidence, competitive intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM), demographics of health insurance economics, and sales management. His work is published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Journal of Business and Policy Research, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Social Sciences, Journal of Applied Business Research, Journal of College Teaching and Research, Journal of Healthcare of the Poor and Underserved, and the Journal of Immigrant Health. His work was awarded the Journal of Marketing’s Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award for ”…most significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing” for 1999.

Dr. Adidam has also been awarded UNO’s College of Business Administration Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Research in 2000 and successfully competed for a University of Nebraska Summer Research Award in 1997. In 2006, he received the best paper award at the Third International Business Research conference in Melbourne, Australia. He is a member of the Strategic Planning Institute’s Council on Market Strategy in Cambridge, MA, Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, American Marketing Association, and Academy of Marketing Science.

Service
Professor Adidam is the Director of CBA’s International Initiatives, and a former Chairman of the Marketing and Management department. He developed a comprehensive marketing plan for the Salvation Army in Omaha, NE, serving as a panel member for a discussion about global marketing and policies on Nebraska Public Television in 2001 and 2009, active membership on a number of college and campus-wide councils and committees, and he has provided expert opinions on numerous retailing and marketing-strategy related topics for radio, newspapers, and other media. In 2008, he was awarded UNO’s College of Business Administration Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Service. Before entering academe, Professor Adidam developed, marketed, and implemented application software systems for global companies.

Prof. Paurav Shukla

Biography
Paurav Shukla is the Professor of Marketing and the head of Management & Marketing Group at the Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK. His research interests include cross-cultural marketing, comparative consumer behaviour, and marketing in emerging markets with a particular focus on luxury brands. Paurav’s career began in industry, and he continues to work hand in hand with industry as a researcher, practitioner and advisor. Previously he has held academic positions at Glasgow Caledonian University (UK), University of Brighton (UK), Liverpool Hope University (UK), Gujarat Law Society (India) and corporate organizations including 7th Sense Consulting (UK & India), Scanpoint Graphics (India), Claris Lifesciences (India) among others. He also holds visiting professorship at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Germany, Aalto University, Finland, Misr International University, Egypt, among others. He has also delivered corporate training, teaching and consulting assignments for organizations in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been actively involved in funded research projects. He is currently working on several client projects involving large scale comparative datasets. He has directly taught students representing more than 60 nationalities and been one of the pioneers in e-teaching methods wherein he employs cutting edge web and social media technologies in his teaching approach. His website www.pauravshukla.com gets more than 20,000 hits per month globally. He has written widely in the areas of his research domain in top-tier journals including Journal of Business Research, Journal of World Business, Marketing Letters, Information & Management, International Marketing Review, Psychology & Marketing, Alcohol & Alcoholism, Eating behaviours, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research, Journal of Entrepreneurship, and Journal of Product & Brand Management among others. He is an expert in quantitative techniques including structural equation modeling and complex land and field experiments and has also published papers using mixed methods approach. He has contributed chapters to edited books, case studies and popular accounts of his work have appeared in the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Woman’s Wear Daily (the fashion bible), Luxury Society, Newsweek, National Post of Canada and LiveMint Wall Street Journal, among others. He has been involved as a guest editor for journals, conference chair, and track chair for prestigious conferences such as EMAC. He is also on the editorial and review boards of several renowned conferences and journals.

Professor Naser Al Sherif

Biography

• Alsharif received his Ph.D. from Creighton University Medical Center (CUMC) in Pharmacology/Toxicology, 1992; M.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), 1988 and Pharm.D. from UNMC, 1987, in Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• He served as the Associate Director of the Distance Pharmacy Pathway (2001-2006) and as the coordinator for international relations for the Middle East & India. Since 1995, he coordinated exchange visits by students and faculty from China, Egypt, England, Jordan, Sweden, and South Korea and finalized several memorandums of understanding.
• Alsharif was acknowledged by his students for winning outstanding teacher awards and by his colleagues in the school of pharmacy and health professions by winning scholarly, teaching and service awards.
• He was the recipient of Creighton University John P. Schlegel Diversity Award for Excellence and Innovation (2013) and the Distinguished Educator in Teaching as Scholarship (2014). He was the recipient of the Alexander J and Martha H. Frost Faculty Endowment Fund for Excellence in the Classroom (2019).
• He is well published in the areas of toxicity of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, distance education, scholarship of teaching and learning in teaching medicinal chemistry and clinical toxicology and in the use of technology, health care disparities and cultural competency, health, and healing practice of people of faith, provider bias and global pharmacy education.
• He is a certified immunizer and an immunization trainer. He has practiced as an on-call and part-time pharmacist for >20 year at five local hospitals and precepted hundreds of students.
• Alsharif has been a member of the International Pharmaceutical Federation since 2015 and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) since 1995.  He is a winner of the AACP Innovation in Teaching Award Competition, 2000, 2006 and received an honorable mention for the same Award in 2002 and 2004. In 2016, he received the inaugural Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). In 2018, he received the inaugural Outstanding Service Award from the AACP Global Pharmacy Education Special Interest Group and in 2020 from the Health Disparities and Cultural Competency Special Interest Group.
• Alsharif served as a member of evaluation teams for the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) International Services. He also served as a visiting professor, consultant, coordinator for strategic planning and as an external assessor at several universities in the Arab world including Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Dr. Alsharif was also invited as a plenary speaker and presenter at several local, national and international conferences.
• In Feb 2022, he fulfilled his dream to come back to the Arab World and serve on a full-time basis. He accepted a position of Dean at the Lebanese American University, the only ACPE accredited school of pharmacy outside the USA.  The last 2 ½ years have been one of the most uplifting experiences of his career despite the fact Lebanon is experiencing the perfect storm with economic, political, and social challenges on top of a devastating pandemic. Despite the challenges, great efforts were made to enhance the morale and wellness of faculty, staff, and students including inspirational speakers, potlucks, hikes, workshops webinars sport, pharmacy has talent, Karaoke night; establishing a culture of interprofessional sensitivity “working with and for each other”, demonstrating respect for the contributions of each member of the SOP family; enhanced faculty submissions for grants resulting in increased publications; lead the IPE and IPC culture at the school and our medical centers; established several MOUs with NGOs, Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, a new MoU was signed with the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)-College of Pharmacy to have LAU PharmD students complete their required Advance Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs; coordinated with the MOPH their First Annual Pharmacovigilance Conference, Lead; coordinated the First Annual Lebanese Schools of Pharmacy Symposium: United in Action: Pharmacy Education and Practice Advancement. The SOP under his leadership led the efforts to establish a Pharmaceutical and Medical Research Center (PMRC) to conduct bioequivalence and clinical research. MoUs with several of the local pharmaceutical companies to conduct their bioequivalence studies in the PMRC were signed. A $105,000 funding from CVS to support different activities at the SOP and $100,000 Corporate Grant to remodel the dispensing were obtained. Great efforts were spent to energize the SOP alumni on a professional and personal level, holding an alumni reunion, end of year gathering, dinners at professional pharmacy conferences in the US and re-energizing the alumni chapter.

Dr. Alsharif was very active in the Omaha community in interfaith dialogue and in educating the public, politicians, academia, businesses, and faith groups about, Arabs, Muslims, Arab-Christians, Arab Americans, Islam, Palestine, and the rights of Palestinian People. He is also a football coach (D license) and a state, high-school, and college football referee. He continues to advocate interfaith dialogue in Lebanon and coaching football.

Dr. Ebtesam Ahmed

Dr. Ebtesam Ahmed is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Health Professions,College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, New YorkShe is also the Director of the Pharmacy Internship for the MJHS Institute for Innovation in Palliative Care. Dr. Ahmed earned her Doctorate of Pharmacy (PharmD) from St. John’s University and completed a post-graduate pharmacy residency at the University of California, San Francisco. She also holds a Master’s degree in Bioethics from Columbia University. Dr. Ahmed has been extensively teaching globally to pharmacists, physicians and healthcare professionals. She also conducted numerous training workshops for pharmacists in Egypt, Guatemala and Kyrgyzstan. She has given presentations at national and international medical conferences about pain management, palliative care, ethics and end-of-life care. She has a particular interest in the role of pharmacists in palliative care and global access to controlled substances for pain management. She is a board member of the International Association of Hospice and Palliative Care and a member of the World Health Organization EMRO Regional Palliative Care Expert Network.

Professor Shaun T. Schafer

Dr. Shaun T. Schafer, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice President of Curriculum, Academic Effectiveness, and Policy Development at Metropolitan University of Denver. He previously served as the chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Production and the president of the Council of Chairs and Directors. He joined MSU Denver in 2006 as an affiliate faculty member, and has since been a visiting assistant professor, assistant professor, associate professor, and he became a full professor in Fall 2017. Along the way he has served on college curriculum committees in Letters, Arts, and Sciences and in Professional Studies, chaired the CPS committee, spent one and a half years as Faculty Associate to the Dean of CPS for curriculum, and chaired more than two dozen screening committees.

Shaun holds a bachelor’s in Journalism/News Editorial from the University of Oklahoma, a Master’s in Educational Leadership Studies from Oklahoma State University, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Colorado State University. He was lucky enough to work in journalism for 20 years, starting as an intern at the Kansas City Business Journal. He also worked at newspapers and news syndicates in Chicago, San Francisco, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Brisbane and Sydney, Australia.

He made the move to begin teaching after several years of working with interns at the Tulsa World and serving as the newspaper adviser at the University of Tulsa. It was his belief that he could help mold the next generation of journalists if he just got to them a little earlier in their educational careers.

While active learning spaces are critical to Shaun, he would like to make them even more active. His ideal course would be one taught while hiking, preferably on one of Colorado’s 54 “Fourteeners,” those peaks higher than 14,000 feet. An avid hiker, Shaun has done 14 of the “Fourteeners” and he continues to plan additional treks each year. One of his dream hikes is to travel from summit to summit on the Sangre De Cristo mountains in southern Colorado.

Professor Bilal Al-Nawas

Professor Bilal Al-Nawas is Chairman of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Plastic Surgery Department of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. He is also an international faculty member at Kyung Hee University School of Dentistry, Seoul, Korea
He graduated in Dentistry and Medicine and has been affiliated to the University of Mainz for more than 15 years. His clinical and scientific focus in dental implantology is clinical studies and basic research. His clinical work fields are compromised patients with risk factors or local bone deficiency, head and neck oncology and cleft reconstructions.
He is the editor-in chief of the Journal of Dental Implantology ZZI Clinical Oral Implants Research. He is the Officer for Infection Control and QM of the German Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery ( DGMKG).
He is also the former president of the International Federation of Dental Anesthesiology Societies (IFDAS) and Education Officer of the German Society of Implantology (DGI). He is a member of the Osteology Expert Council. He is a Fellow of the ITI Section Germany, Education Delegate and Head of the Research Committee and Member of the ITI Board.