Dr. Gary W. Cleary is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of drug delivery systems and polymer technologies as well as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Corium International, Inc. Dr. Cleary holds more than 25 issued US patents, with more than 20 other patents pending related to transdermal, mucosal, polymer and other drug delivery technologies. In 1991, he received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Life Sciences for Northern California. In 2004, he received the Biomaterials Entrepreneur Award of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials. This year, Dr. Cleary will receive the AAPS Rainer Hoffman Award for Product through Science and the UCSF Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award.

Dr. Cleary earned a Pharm.D. degree from University of California, San Francisco, an MBA in health sciences from University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in pharmaceutics from Rutgers University. During his career, he held research and management positions at the PHS/FDA, Alza, Key Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, and Cygnus. Dr. Cleary founded Cygnus in 1985 and served as its President, Chairman, and Chief Technical Officer.

Dr. Cleary is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE) and past president of the Controlled Release Society (CRS) and a member of several other professional affiliations.

Dr. Cleary is currently a member on the Advisory Boards of Rutger’s Biomedical Engineering, UCSF, and the University of Pacific. Dr. Cleary serves on the Board of Directors of Corium and the Community School of Music and Arts, in Mt. View CA, as well as on the Scientific Advisory Board of Appian Labs, LLC in Austin, TX. His past board affiliations include Angiogenix, Cygnus, NJ Center for Biomaterials, Center for Military Biomaterials Research, and Purdue University Bioengineering.

Dr. Hamid Ghandehari, expert in biomaterials for drug delivery, is a Professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutics & Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Bioengineering of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, USA. He came to Utah from the University of Maryland, Baltimore where he was Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Nanomedicine and Cellular Delivery. His research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other agencies focuses on the design of new polymers for gene therapy of head and neck cancer, targeted delivery of antiangiogenic inhibitors, oral delivery of chemotherapeutics by polymeric carriers, assessing the biocompatibility and cellular trafficking of organic and inorganic nanoconstructs, and design and development of stimuli-sensitive hybrid nanoparticles for controlled chemical delivery. His research group has published over 60 manuscripts and 160 abstracts. He has given over 80 invited talks. Dr. Ghandehari’s group pioneered the use of recombinant polymers for gene delivery applications, evaluated the transepithelial transport of dendrimers for oral delivery and synthesized water-soluble polymers that target tumor angiogenesis. He is on the advisory boards of several drug delivery companies and organizations, the Executive Editor of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and on editorial boards of Journal of Controlled Release, Pharmaceutical Research, Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine, and Journal of Bioactive and Compatible Polymers. Dr. Ghandehari received his BS in Pharmacy (1989) and PhD in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry (1996) from the University of Utah.

Kazunori Kataoka, Ph.D., is Professor of Biomaterials at the University of Tokyo, with a joint appointment in the Division of Clinical Biotechnology at the Center for Disease Biology and Integrative Medicine at the University of Tokyo Medical School. He also serves as Director of the Center for NanoBio Integration at the University of Tokyo, an interdisciplinary initiative sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. He received B.S. (1974) degree in Organic Chemistry, and M.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees in Polymer Chemistry at the University of Tokyo under the guidance of Prof. Teiji Tsuruta. He held positions at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Tokyo Women’s Medical College (1979-1989) and Department of Materials Engineering at Tokyo University of Science (1989-1998) before joining the faculty of the University of Tokyo in 1998. He was a Visiting Professor at University of Paris XIII, France (1992, 1996), and at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (2007). He is currently a Visiting Professor at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (2008). He served as the Adjunct Director of the Biomaterials Center at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan between 2001-2004. Kataoka is a past president of the Japanese Society for Biomaterials (2004-2006), a president of Japanese Society of Gene Design and Delivery (2004-), a Vice President of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (2008-), a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) (1999-) and a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE) (2004-). He was the recipient of several awards, including the Award of the Japanese Society for Biomaterials (1993), the Outstanding Paper Award of the Controlled Release Society (1995), the Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (2000), Clemson Award in Basic Research, Society for Biomaterials, USA (2005), Barré Award, University of Montreal (2006), and Founder’s Award of Controlled Release Society (2008). He has almost 400 publications and is on the editorial board of twelve international journals. He is the Editor of Journal of Biomaterials Science, Polymer Edition, the Editor of Journal of Controlled Release (Controlled Release Society), and the Associate Editor of Biomacromolecules (American Chemical Society). His current major research interests include supramolecular materials for nanobiotechnology, focusing on gene and drug delivery.

Dr. Uday Kompella is a world leader in ocular drug delivery and his pioneering work has addressed a wide range of medical problems. Dr. Kompella’s laboratory conducts research on various drug delivery systems including nanoparticles, microparticles, and injectable implants. Using these delivery systems and new therapeutic agents, Dr. Kompella's laboratory is developing novel approaches for treating diabetic complications, age related macular degeneration, and cancers. The drugs of interest include small molecules as well as macromolecules.

Dr. Kompella has held several leadership positions within the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. In recognition of his scientific leadership and contributions to the advancement of pharmaceutical sciences, Dr. Kompella has been recognized with the Fellow Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and Distinguished Scientist Award from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). For his teaching and mentorship excellence, Dr. Kompella received Distinguished Teaching Award from the UNMC College of Pharmacy and Teaching Excellence Award from Auburn University. Dr. Kompella is an Editor for the journals Pharmaceutical Research and Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs. Also, he serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Ocular Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Journal of Ocular Biology, Diseases, and Informatics, Drug Delivery Technology, Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, and International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences & Nanotechnology.