USC School of Pharmacy Dean R. Pete Vanderveen has restructured the school, streamlining four departments into two, appointing new department chairs and reestablishing the associate dean for research position.

According to Vanderveen, the streamlined organization will enable the new leadership team to make decisions and allocate resources at the department level while still retaining the overall vision of the school.

“With the new administrative team in place, I will be in a better position to represent the school externally and to promote the school to a broad audience of colleagues, alumni, friends and industry partners,” said Vanderveen, holder of the John Stauffer Decanal Chair in Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The former Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy and the former Department of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy have merged to become the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Economics & Policy.

Heading the new department is Kathleen A. Johnson, associate professor of clinical pharmacy and of pharmaceutical economics and policy.

Johnson, who joined the school’s faculty in 1984, has played an integral role in the development of the school’s clinical programs based in community and hospital settings. She is widely published and frequently lectures on pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical economics.

The new Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences (PPSC) is comprised of the former departments of pharmaceutical sciences and of molecular pharmacology and toxicology. Sarah Hamm-Alvarez, the Gavin S. Herbert Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, is heading the melded research unit of the School.

Hamm-Alvarez was interim chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences prior to the restructuring. A well-known researcher in the area of Sjögren’s disease specifically and cellular drug and membrane trafficking generally, Hamm-Alvarez has had funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1994.

She holds permanent membership on the Genes and Drug Delivery Study Section at the NIH and is executive editor of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews.

Vanderveen also reinstated the associate dean for research position, appointing Enrique Cadenas, the Charles Krown/Alumni Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In this role, Cadenas represents the school’s research and scholarly interests to the university community and beyond, provides training and support to researchers, and assists in the identification of research funding opportunities.

Cadenas, known for his work in mitochondrial oxidative stress and aging, is chair of the Cellular Mechanisms in Aging and Development Study Section at the NIH. He has published more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has had NIH funding for more than 15 years.

Cadenas and Hamm-Alvarez have joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.