Chablani Recognized for Advancing Women in Pharmacy

Dr. Lipika Chablani, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Wegmans School of Pharmacy, has been recognized for her commitment to mentorship, advocacy, program development, and leadership with the 2025 Knapp-Matuszak Award.

Given by the Women in Academia Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), the Knapp-Matuszak Award is a national recognition named in honor of the founding members of the Women in Academia SIG and awarded annually to an individual who has demonstrated significant and sustained commitment to advancing women in pharmacy. Chablani was selected based on her exemplary work in supporting the professional growth of women in pharmacy academia. She has consistently contributed to initiatives that foster career development for women faculty, and students, including structured mentoring, collaborative research engagement, and institutional service that engages women in pharmacy. The AACP is a national organization comprised of 142 schools, more than 6,000 faculty, and 62,000 students.

Chablani will be formally recognized twice this summer, at the Women in Academia SIG business meeting in June and at the award luncheon during AACP’s annual meeting in July.

A longtime member of AACP, Chablani has been a member of the Women in Academia SIG and is also involved in the Pharmaceutics section, which focuses on the study of drug delivery and formulation. In 2018, she received the AACP New Investigator Award (NIA) to help fund her research. As an AACP member, she has served in a variety of roles, a mentor for early-career faculty members, NIA grant reviewer, chair of the mentoring and programming committees, and was elected as the pharmaceutics section chair-elect in 2023 for a three-year leadership term.

Along with teaching, Chablani has an active research laboratory focused on drug delivery systems, vaccines, and cancer immunotherapy. For her efforts in and outside of the classroom, she was named Advisor of the Year in 2015, 2017, and 2019 and Preceptor of the Year in 2016 by her students. In 2020, St. John Fisher University also recognized Chablani with the Trustees Award for Distinguished Scholarly Achievement, the highest honor the Board of Trustees can bestow on a faculty member, second only to an honorary degree.

In addition to holding a doctoral degree from Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, Chablani holds a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Mumbai University and a master’s degree from Campbell University’s School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.