{"id":253826,"date":"2026-10-06T14:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=253826"},"modified":"2026-10-06T14:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:20:16","slug":"second-pikal-symposium-held-in-honor-of-the-late-professor-michael-j-pikal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/10\/second-pikal-symposium-held-in-honor-of-the-late-professor-michael-j-pikal\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Pikal Symposium held in honor of the late Professor Michael J. Pikal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Pikal was a professor at the UConn School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SoPPS) and a world expert in P<\/span>harmaceutical freeze-drying. UConn hosted the second biennial symposium last month, following the <\/span>first in 2024<\/span><\/a>, in Pikal\u2019s honor and to celebrate his groundbreaking research on freeze-drying.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Freeze-drying, also called lyophilization, is a dedicated process of drying at subzero temperatures and reduced pressure to preserve sensitive therapeutics for long term storage. <\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The symposium started with a Hands-on Basic Lyophilization Short Course, taught by UConn SoPPS Professor Robin Bogner. This course took place on August 17 an<\/span>d 18 and included lectures and hands on lab focused on freeze-drying pharmaceuticals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the hands-on course, there were two-days of presentations and panel discussions between leaders from across the pharmaceutical field focused on their own advancements in the field of freeze-drying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The interactive panel discussions brought together close to a hundred attendees including <\/span>scientists from over 25 pharmaceutical companies, such as AstraZeneca, Merck, Eli Lilly, BMS and Pfizer, as well as professors from seven universities including UConn, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas at Austin, and Purdue University.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the 13 speakers at last month\u2019s symposium was Serguei Tchessalov, Owner of SN Lyophilization, who served as the keynote speaker.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Pikal
Pikal Symposium attendees at the School of Phamacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences on Aug. 19, 2026. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bogner and fellow SoPPS Professor Xiuling Lu, along with a committee of scientists from several pharmaceutical companies, organized this symposium for the second time. They hope to continue the event for years to come as a way to honor a prolific leader in the area of freeze-drying. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are more than ten pharmaceutical companies that sponsored the symposium, making the scale of the meeting exceed the first one.\u00a0 Additionally, donations to the Pikal Fellowship Fund will support graduate students who work in the field of freeze-drying.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps keep Professor Pikal\u2019s name alive,\u201d Bogner said. \u201cIt also helps graduate students and the next generation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second Pikal Symposium took place on August 18 and 19, 2026 in honor of the late Professor Michael J. Pikal, where members from academia and industry in the pharmaceutical field gathered to share their own advancements in freeze-drying and other innovative product stabilization research. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":253862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2734],"class_list":["post-253826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pharm"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-13 22:15:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253826"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253879,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253826\/revisions\/253879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/253862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253826"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=253826"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=253826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}