Valentino Stella Students & Friends Graduate Fellowship

This campaign has concluded, but if you would like to still make a gift to support the Valentino Stella Students & Friends Graduate Fellowship, please click here.

~~~

To recognize Dr. Stella’s 44-year teaching and research career at KU, his commitment to his students, and the international impact of his discoveries, we ask you to join us in establishing the Valentino Stella Students & Friends Graduate Fellowship.

This full-tuition endowed fellowship will bring top pharmacy students to KU in perpetuity. These future students will continue Stella's legacy through the impact of their work on future drug discovery and the ways in which their passion and intellectual curiosity will transform lives. 

All gifts made will be matched dollar for dollar by the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department!

If you are interested in supporting the Valentino Stella Students & Friends Graduate Fellowship over multiple years, please contact Sophie Lamb at slamb@kuendowment.org or by calling 785-832-7476.

As we look back at Dr. Stella’s 46-year teaching and research career, it becomes clear the scope of what he has created is remarkable. With 49 patents, numerous drug inventions, and well over 300 papers, Stella has positioned himself as an academic leader at KU, in the U.S. and across the world.

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Stella earned his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the Victorian College of Pharmacy (now Monash University) in Victoria, Australia. He came to KU as a young man and it was here that he earned a doctorate in analytical pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmaceutics in 1971. His mentor at KU was Takeru Higuchi, known worldwide as the “Father of Physical Pharmacy.”

Stella has co-founded three pharmaceutical companies and was recently named to the National Academy of Inventors. In 2010, he was an inaugural inductee into the Lawrence Business Hall of Fame. He also was a founding board member of the Bioscience & Technology Business Center at KU, which opened in 2010 to help other entrepreneurs. He has received most of the major teaching awards at KU, as well as research awards from AAPS and APhA.

It would be difficult to rank Stella’s professional accomplishments in order of importance, and we will not even try. To the hundreds of students he has taught and mentored over the years, including both graduate and Pharm.D. students, it’s the sharing of his years of exploration, ideas and invention.