Dr. Eileen Kennedy, a Professor in the Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Department at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, has been appointed the Georgia Athletic Association (GAA) Professor of Pharmacy, announced Dr. Jack Hu, UGA’s Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost. “This endowed appointment is a testament to your outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the College, the University, and your discipline,” said Dr. Hu in his notification letter to Dr. Kennedy. “Thank you for your valuable service to the University of Georgia.”
A member of the College of Pharmacy faculty since fall 2010, Dr. Kennedy currently serves as the Interim Department Head for PBS and the Director of the UGA Cancer Center. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her research on peptide chemistry and drug discovery and has published almost 60 reviewed manuscripts in such highly regarded journals as Nature Methods, Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Science Signaling, ACS Chemical Biology, and EMBO Journal. These publications are in addition to several patent applications and two issued patents. She has two active multi-year national grants, including serving as principal investigator for a current R01 from the National Institutes of Health to study WASF in tumor metastasis, along with a Michael J. Fox Foundation Award to study LRRK2 in Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Kennedy is considered an outstanding leader in her scientific discipline. She has been elected as a member of Council for the American Peptide Society, appointed as the International Liaison for this same society, and was elected to serve as the meeting co-chair for the upcoming 2025 Symposium for this group. At the University level, she recently concluded a term as a UGA Women’s Leadership Fellow, serves on the search committee for the President’s Cluster Hiring Initiative for Brain Science and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and has served on the International Research Collaboration Working Group and UGA Innovation District Faculty Advisory Group.
According to Dean Kelly Smith of the UGA College of Pharmacy, “The nature and well-funded characteristics of Dr. Kennedy’s science, her well-received instructional and student mentorship work, her leadership roles within her discipline, and her growing administrative and leadership contributions at our College and the University are highly consistent with the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Pharmacy.”
She added, “Endowed professorships allow us to recruit and retain the very best in teaching, science, and research. It is inspiring to see the University and the Athletic Association partner to recognize and enrich the work of UGA’s top faculty and build on the extraordinary strengths of the academic and athletic programs. We are immensely proud that Dr. Kennedy’s accomplishments have led to her being amongst UGA faculty who are GAA professors.”
