Hamid Omidian, Ph.D.
Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Hamid Omidian, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences, earned his Ph.D. in polymer science (1997) from Brunel University (UK), and his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in chemical engineering from Tehran Polytechnic (Iran) in 1990 and 1987 respectively. He has been serving in both academia and industry at different positions for over 23 years. He served as a head of the department, assistant professor, editor and lecturer at Iran Polymer Institute and Iran University Press. In 2001 he joined Purdue University to pursue his postdoctoral fellowship under Prof. Kinam Park in the department of pharmaceutics and industrial pharmacy (IPPH). He joined industry in 2002 and served as principal scientist, research manager and senior research scientist at Kos Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Laboratories. He has been principal investigator of a number of product development projects in the area of gastric retention drug delivery systems, diet aids, water-superabsorbent hydrogels, and more.
Omidian holds 3 US patents, and over 10 US and world patent applications in the area of hydrogels. He has over 45 peer-reviewed publications, 45 conference presentations, and has authored and co-authored 11 book chapters and 10 books. He has received major awards from different organizations as "outstanding teacher finalist", author of "outstanding research paper", author of "best research paper", "outstanding researcher", and presenter of an "outstanding research project", and was awarded the Golden Apple in 2009 for teaching excellence.
Omidian has received multiple NSU grants (HPD, President, and Chancellor's) to continue his research on oral gastric retention technologies. He recently filed two invention disclosures with NSU's Office of Technology Transfer on swellable scaffolds and cryogelling hydrogels. He was awarded the Chancellor's grant to conduct a new research on developing polymers to reduce alcohol absorption in the systemic circulation, and is also collaborating with the college of Dental Medicine to develop new tissue engineering scaffolds based on hydrocolloids. His research interests and expertise include water-loving polymers, hydrogels, superporous hydrogels, the phase I clinical trial, hydrocolloids, controlled drug delivery systems, oral gastric retention delivery, transdermal patches, pharmaceutical dosage forms and microencapsulation. He is a regular reviewer of many peer-reviewed journals in the area of polymers and pharmaceutical sciences, and is a past or current member of several organizations including "American Chemical Society", "Controlled Release Society", and "American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists".
Omidian is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Bioactive and Compatible Polymers, currently teaching and coordinating several core courses at the professional Pharm.D. and the graduate Ph.D. programs, and represents NSU's Barry and Judy Silverman College of Pharmacy at the United States Pharmacopeia Convention (USP).