Rishi Thakkar
Rishi is working on his Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin in Dr. Mo Maniruzzaman’s Pharmaceutical Engineering and 3D Printing (PharmE3D) lab where his research focuses on novel manufacturing strategies for poorly water-soluble drugs. The process engineering efforts of his research are directed towards understanding the processing variables involved in 3D printing medicine for two additive manufacturing processes which include fused deposition modeling (FDM), and selective laser sintering (SLS), and their influence on the drug and formulation behavior by utilizing pharmaceutical Quality by Design (QbD) tools. The formulation development aspect of Rishi’s investigation is focused on developing and characterizing amorphous solid dispersions and cocrystal systems using such novel additive manufacturing processes. Rishi has received three AAPS PharmSci 360 best abstracts (2019, 2020, 2021), The International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council of the Americas Foundation graduate student award (2021), AAPS Travelship supported by AstraZeneca (2021), and multiple graduate research fellowships from the College of Pharmacy during his Ph.D. Before joining the Ph.D. program at UT Austin, Rishi got his master’s degree in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery from the University of Mississippi under Dr. Michael Repka’s supervision and his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from Gujarat Technological University where he was awarded an undergraduate research fellowship by Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) which motivated him to pursue a career in pharmaceutical research and development.
2021 NIPTE Outstanding Student Researcher
Novel Manufacturing Strategies for Poorly Soluble Drugs
This research attempts to understand the influence of different processing variables associated with hot-melt extrusion, and 3D printing on the formulation and manufacturing of poorly water-soluble drug substances.