Skip to main content

Noted UK Alumnus Receives Award for Contributions to Pharmacometrics

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics has awarded The Sheiner-Beal Pharmacometrics for 2022 to Daniel Weiner, a University of Kentucky doctoral graduate and a consultant specializing in model-based drug development.

Weiner, who earned three degrees from UK, including a doctorate in mathematical statistics with an emphasis on compartmental modeling, has helped create some of the most highly used software in pharmaceutical development and has co-written a textbook in the field. He is an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina where he is working on methods for precision dosing of patients.

“For researchers in pharmacometrics, winning the Sheiner-Beal award is a huge honor, a bit like winning a Nobel Prize,” said William S. Rayens, chair of the Dr. Bing Zhang Department of Statistics in UK’s College of Arts & Sciences. “Dr. Weiner is only the second statistician to have been selected, and we are very proud to claim him as a Ph.D. graduate of our department.”   

He has extensive drug development experience and has served as an expert consultant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on pharmacokinetic modeling and bioequivalence assessment. Before working at Certara/Pharsight as a senior vice president and chief science officer, Weiner held several management positions with Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals; Statistical Consultants Inc.; Syntex Development Research; Quintiles; and IVAX Research.  He is a member of the Board of Directors for Simulations Plus (Nasdaq:SLP), where he also heads up the Scientific Advisory Board.

He co-wrote and designed the WinNonlin family of PK/PD modeling software products used by more than 1,000 institutions. He is the co-author of Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Data Analysis: Concepts and Applications, now in its fifth edition. In 2013, he gave an interview to UK about how he was mentored in his studies.

 “The University of California San Francisco established the Sheiner-Beal Pharmacometrics Award to honor the contributions of Drs. Lewis B. Sheiner and Stuart Beal to the discipline of pharmacometrics. 

Pharmacometrics is defined as the science that quantifies drug, disease and clinical trial information to aid efficient drug development, regulatory decisions and rational therapeutic decision making in patients. It uses models that are based on pharmacology, physiology and patients’ genetic constitution and disease state. The analysis of such data requires a proficiency in biostatistics, computational methods, and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling.