Dr. Akhlaghi is Professor and Ernest Mario Distinguished Chair of Pharmaceutics in the College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island (URI). She has over 18 years of experience in clinical pharmacology research and extensive history of clinical collaboration with academia and pharmaceutical industry. She has obtained a PharmD from University of Mashhad Iran and a PhD from University of Sydney, Australia. She then has completed at Post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Sydney and another post doc at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom before joining URI in 2001. Her laboratory has developed and validated analytical methods for over 30 drugs and their metabolites.

she specializes in the use of semi-mechanistic pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PKPD) modeling in pre-clinical or clinical drug development. The goal of her research program is to improve the quality of use of medicines by the means of identifying sources of variation in dose-concentration and concentration-effect relationships. The three main objectives of this research include: (1) to understand the effect of diabetes mellitus and related conditions on the pharmacokinetics and activity of drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters. (2) To characterize the sources of variability in the pharmacokinetic and/or –dynamic (PKPD) of drugs in different patient populations and with respect to genetic polymorphism and (3) Development of novel drugs for treatment of alcoholism.