Mark Hanin is a final-year PharmD candidate at the University of Southern California Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
One of my best experiences as a student pharmacist has been engaging in academic pharmacy research. Coming into pharmacy school, I always knew that much of my experience would focus on developing my clinical knowledge and practicing clinical skills. However, I could never predict how research would come to shape my experience.
The impact of research
One of my first research experiences was working as a course assistant for our international student summer and winter programs at the University of Southern California (USC) Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. My responsibilities included helping students understand the regulatory, clinical, and pharmaceutical science considerations drug manufacturers must consider when submitting a new drug application for FDA approval. This was part of their drug discovery project for the program, where students were guided to engage in cross functional collaboration focused on interpreting emerging clinical data while developing scientific and medical information resources to enhance their understanding of the drug development process in the United States.
It was a fulfilling experience, and translating this experience into a research project that focuses on how project-based learning can enhance modern educational pedagogy speaks to the impact research has on enhancing student pharmacists’ critical thinking, project management, communications, and data analysis skills. We surveyed hundreds of students across multiple cohorts over the years on their experiences in the programs. This formulated the basis of our research, which we presented at the 2025 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Annual Meeting in Chicago and at the 83rd World Congress for the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) in Denmark this past September, where we received the third place award for Best Poster Presentation (Academic Pharmacy Section).
AI’s role in student success
AI has become a hot topic issue in recent years. There have been conversations around how AI can be used to enhance the PharmD curriculum but not as much conversation on how AI can be leveraged to predict student success. At USC, we developed a model called AI–SiPS (Artificial Intelligence–Success in Pharmacy School) to connect admissions and academic data with postgraduate outcomes. We analyzed data from 1,000 PharmD students from the classes of 2019 to 2024, and our findings demonstrated that communication skills were a much stronger predictor of residency match success than grade point average. We also discovered that graduates from stronger admission tiers pursue careers in the pharmaceutical industry, reflecting a growing trend for how pharmacy career pathways have evolved.
This experience opened my eyes to how pharmacy schools can use AI to predict postgraduate outcomes for students while they are still in pharmacy school and create programming catered to their success. This was another research project we presented at the AACP Annual Meeting and the FIP World Congress, where we received second place for Best Poster Presentation (Academic Pharmacy Section).
Unlimited opportunities
Other recent projects I engaged in discussed how AI can be used to enhance clinical decision making and how pharmacy advancement and specialization is viewed at a global level. Overall, academic pharmacy research opened my eyes to how vast the profession is and the unlimited opportunities you have when you immerse yourself in research.