The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy awarded the top research award to a former student and graduate of Buckeye Valley.

Julie Johnson, Pharm.D., dean of the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy, was honored July 25 with the Volwiler Research Achievement Award during the annual AACP meeting in Anaheim, California.

“I am grateful to be this year’s recipient,” Johnson said Friday. “The award is meaningful because it represents recognition from my peers for my research.”

According to a news release from the University of Florida, the annual award is presented to an individual recognized by his or her peers as one of the leading researchers within pharmacy education in an area of the pharmaceutical and clinical sciences. She was recognized for her contribution in the field of pharmacogenomics, the study of how an individual’s genes affect the response to drugs.

Johnson’s research had a significant impact in creating guidelines for individualized dosing of the blood thinner Warfarin based on pharmacogenetic information.

She is also a distinguished professor in the College of Pharmacy and the College of Medicine of the University of Florida and only one of three women to receive the award.

“I think for any researcher seeing that kind of impact is gratifying,” Johnson said.

In total Johnson said she has earned close to $40 million in research funding and has written more than 250 articles in her discipline.

Johnson said she earned her Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from The Ohio State University. She received her Doctorate of Pharmacy from the University of Texas and she did her postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University.

According to Johnson’s biographical information, she left her faculty position at the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy to join the faculty of the University of Florida in 1998. She was appointed the dean of the College of Pharmacy in 2013.

Growing up in Delaware, Johnson “was active and a leader in 4-H,”

According to Marilyn Johnson-Masters, Johnson’s mother, during her senior year at Buckeye Valley Johnson showed the grand champion steer at the fair.

Johnson-Masters said Johnson had lettered in tennis all four years at Buckeye Valley and was featured in the Delaware Gazette as ‘teen of the week.’”

She also was a cheerleader for four years at Buckeye Valley.

Johnson is the daughter of the late Ed Johnson and Marilyn Johnson-Masters, who resides in Delaware.