Graduate student fund endowed in Karnes’ name
In honor of the recent retirement of VCU School of Pharmacy professor H. Thomas Karnes, a group of his former graduate students launched an initiative to honor his accomplishments into perpetuity. To that end, an endowment fund to benefit pharmacy graduate students has been established in his name with donations already totaling more than $20,000.
The fund will be endowed at the MCV Foundation, supporting future students in honor of those Karnes has supported throughout his career: 35 M.S., Ph.D. and postdoctoral students between 1987 and 2014!
“He gave me such a good, solid foundation,” says Denise Walters (Ph.D. ’91), a senior manager for analytical development at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. “His best advice was ‘No excuses’!”
“Dr. Karnes was one of the most influential people in my scientific career,” recalls alumnus Don Farthing (Ph.D. ’08). “I worked for him in his bioanalytical lab and eventually graduated from [the Department of Pharmaceutics] under his guidance.”
Farthing notes that Karnes was instrumental in bringing many pharmacokinetics/
pharmacodynamics studies to the school.
“He taught our lab group how to perform the bioanalytical work for these PK/PD studies in accordance to FDA guidelines, which ultimately raised our level of technical expertise. For an academic lab, we were performing cutting-edge bioanalytical analysis, as Dr. Karnes invested in bringing state-of-the-art chromatography and mass spectrometry equipment into the lab.
“Yet he was still one of us, playing basketball after work on Wednesday
afternoons, wearing a headband and all.”
Perhaps the ability to mix science with pleasure was one of the hallmarks of Karnes’ success as an advisor. Another important thing Farthing learned from his mentor “is that there was life after a hard day’s work. He enjoys traveling and, from what I hear, he’s labeled as one great cook.” (There’s evidence of that in Karnes’ University of Richmond Culinary Arts Certificate and new ownership in area Firehouse Subs shops.)
Farthing now supports research at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., as a bioanalytical chemist. “Our translational research involves mechanistic and kinetic studies on graft versus host disease, as well as other NCI Experimental Transplant and Immunology Branch projects. Our clinical and basic research group is located at the NIH Clinical Center.”
He considers it a privilege to have worked and been educated under Karnes’ direction. “His track record of success speaks for itself, and the legacy he leaves behind in the field of bioanalytical analysis will be hard to match.”
Categories Alumni news, Faculty and staff news, Graduate students, Student news