Jennica Zaro, PhD, has joined the faculty of the department of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences as associate professor of pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences.

She comes to the USC School of Pharmacy from West Coast University School of Pharmacy, where she served as assistant dean of assessment and scholarship and associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. Prior to that, she was a research assistant professor and a core director of the Translational Research and Histology Laboratories here at the USC School of Pharmacy. A PhD graduate in pharmaceutical sciences from the USC School of Pharmacy, Zaro has held several roles in the pharmaceutical industry, where she has developed formulations for aerosol products, plus designed and validated analytical methods for protein drugs.

Zaro’s research is focused on targeted drug delivery applications utilizing protein-drug conjugates or recombinant fusion proteins, for which she has been awarded numerous grants and has published more than 30 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. She has recently completed the AACP Academic Leadership Fellows Program, serves on the Board of Grants for the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE), and has served on several other national and international grant review panels including the National Institutes of Health and the United Kingdom Medical Research Council.