Program Executive Committee

The U-RISE@NSU program is overseen by five faculty that comprise the Executive Committee. Dr. Gannett is the overall program director. The remaining members oversee the main elements of the training program including Dr. Kawai (Research), Dr. Minond (Curriculum), Dr. Nathanson (Summer Research Experience) and Dr. Rabionet (Career Development). Learn more about each of the four components of the program below.

Dr. Peter Gannett - Program Director

Dr. Peter Gannett

Associate Dean and Professor

College of Pharmacy

Dr. Gannett is the program director for the U-RISE@NSU program and is responsible for all aspects of the program. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a faculty member at West Virginia University from 1990-2014. He has been with the NSU Barry and Judy Silverman College of Pharmacy since 2015 and is the Associate Dean for Research. His research expertise is DNA damage, drug discovery, and nanotechnology. He has extensive experience in overseeing training programs and is a strong supporter of providing research experiences for undergraduates.

Dr. Toshihisa Kawai - Research Director

Dr. Toshihisa Kawai

Chair and Professor

College of Dental Medicine

Dr. Kawai is a chair and professor for the Department of Oral Science and Translational Research in the College of Dental Medicine. He obtained his DDS from Hiroshima University and his PhD in Periodontology/Immunology from Osaka University in Japan. He joined Dr. Martin Taubman's laboratory in the Department of Immunology at the Forsyth Institute in 1993 for his postdoctoral training. From 2000 to 2016, he had his own independent laboratory at the Forsyth Institute and then moved to Nova Southeastern University (NSU) from 2017 to the present. His lab was and is involved in performing research at the molecular and cellular levels, with a focus on immunology, microbiology, and bone biology, to understand the pathogenesis of done destructive oral diseases, including periodontitis and osteonecrosis of jaw, and related other inflammatory bone lytic diseases.

Dr. Silvia Rabionet - Career Development

Dr. Silvia Rabionet

Chair and Professor

College of Pharmacy

Silvia E. Rabionet is an Associate Professor at Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy, and Chair of Department of Sociobehavioral and Administrative Pharmacy. She received a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and her M.A. and Ed.D. from Harvard University.

She has designed and administered numerous training and faculty development grants in the fields of tobacco cessation, public health preparedness, HIV/AIDS, and mentoring, among others. She has developed competency-based models for health workforce development. She has actively participated with the Institute of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, and other national and international networks in the development of materials and technical reports for workforce development.

She teaches Public Health and Health Promotion at the master’s, Pharm.D. and Ph.D. levels. She has expertise in the design of behavioral health promotion, disease prevention, and public health interventions. She has been principal and co-investigator in various research projects: non-medical use of prescription drugs among students; adherence to HAART in the Caribbean and South Florida; health literacy and HIV patients; life stories of youth born with HIV, among others. She was the program director of a National Institute of Mental Health–funded mentoring project on HIV and mental health. The project facilitates the research development of minority junior faculty and doctoral students. These initiatives have provided comprehensive support to early career investigators, including mentoring, methodological skills development (quantitative and qualitative), and multi-institution networking. She has published about public health history and education, mentoring, and sociobehavioral aspects of drug use.

Dr. Lubov Nathanson - Summer Research Experience Director

Dr. Lubov Nathanson

Director of Genomics and Associate Professor

College of Osteopathic Medicine

Dr. Nathanson is an Associate Professor at Nova Southeastern University (NSU), where her research efforts focus on translational genomics. Her combined expertise in bioinformatics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and systems biology allows her to evaluate complex disease states that impact multiple organ systems and have complicated mechanisms of disease onset, activity, and progression. Her current research efforts focus on gaining insight into the epigenomic and transcriptional changes involved in multi-symptom disorders including Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and Gulf War illness (GWI). Specifically, her ongoing research involves identifying biomarkers and mechanisms of ME/CFS and GWI using approaches such as RNA-seq, DNA methylation and single-cell transcriptomics to identify transcriptional regulators that result in characteristic symptomatology associated with ME/CFS and GWI.

As the Summer Research Experience Director, Dr. Nathanson will monitor the progress of the trainees at the collaborating universities and ensure that trainees present the results of their Summer Research Experience.

Dr. Dmitriy Minond - Education Director

Dr. Dmitriy Minond

Associate Professor

College of Pharmacy

Dr. Minond is an Associate Professor at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Barry and Judy Silverman College of Pharmacy Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Rumbaugh Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research. His research focuses on drug discovery for cancer and other diseases. His research group has expertise in molecular biology, enzymology, biochemistry, high-throughput screening assay development and implementation, medicinal chemistry support, and in vivo studies. Their current research efforts focus on melanoma, breast, and prostate cancer drug discovery where they are using multiple approaches and techniques to achieve their objectives.

As the Education Director for U-RISE@NSU, Dr. Minond organizes and runs the Responsible Conduct of Research workshops.

Bryanna Suarez - Program Administrator

Bryanna Suarez

Program Administrator

College of Pharmacy