About

The UCSF School of Pharmacy focuses on improving health—applying a scientific mindset that underlies our research and transforms pharmacy education and patient care.

Our faculty is advancing therapeutics-related science, guiding the most creative PhD candidates, and preparing doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students to think scientifically. With patients at top of mind, we provide essential expertise to health care teams. We aim to improve each patient’s care with a focus on equity and outcomes. Our work is redefining what it means to be leading scientists and pharmacists in today’s world.

The Dean’s Office and the School’s three departments work toward these ends in different but complementary ways:

  1. The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry explores fundamental biological mechanisms and molecules of therapeutic relevance for better health, empowered by novel tech­no­lo­gies at the interface of chemistry, physics, and computational sciences.
  2. The Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences explores the complex processes of biology and applies these findings and bioengineering advances to the development and rational use of precise therapeutics to improve health.
  3. The Department of Clinical Pharmacy advances the precise, safe, and effective use of therapeutics to improve health.
  4. The Dean’s Office ensures the School has the strategic agenda, operational framework, and resources required to succeed.

Faculty in all three departments teach and mentor graduate students, including those in the School's PharmD degree program and the five PhD degree programs administered by the School.

Signs of success

As the oldest school of pharmacy in the West, the UCSF School of Pharmacy has a long history of accomplishment in science, patient care, and in training tomorrow’s PhD researchers and PharmD clinicians.

  • Recipient of more National Institutes of Health research funding than any other pharmacy school in the United States, every year since 1979
  • Consistently among the top universities and colleges receiving total research and development funds for chemistry