Kirk Hevener, PharmD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Q: When did you decide to become a Pharmacist?
A: “I decided I wanted to become a pharmacist when I was in the military. I served as a pharmacy technician and a medic in the US Navy and I worked in pharmacies on Marine bases. I liked what I was doing and wanted to take it to the next step. I took my discharge, went to undergrad and got a degree in chemistry so that I could go to pharmacy school.”
Q: What is your current research and why is it important?
A: “Ever since I was a graduate student my research has focused on infectious diseases, primarily early-stage preclinical drug discovery. Currently we are working on investigating targets in the fatty acid synthesis pathway in C. difficile as a narrow spectrum anti-bacterial target. In the old days in the field of infectious disease, you used to try and find an antibiotic that was broad spectrum but now it is a lot faster to tell what a patient is infected with, and if we have focused anti-bacterials that will help to limit resistance.”
Q: Do you have any hobbies? What do you like to do with your free time?
A: “I am an avid reader and a gamer. I like to do some online gaming. When I have time, I will get the Xbox out. I still get online with friends from pharmacy school. Not as much as I used to but every once in a while.”
Q: What is your favorite movie?
A: “My all-time favorite movie is an oldie but a goodie from Disney called Darby O’Gill and the Little People. It was one of Sean Connery’s first movies and it is a classic. I laugh every time I watch that movie.
Q: Do you like to collect anything?
A: “I like to collect old historical pharmacy textbooks. I have a first edition Goodman and Gilman’s which I like to pull out and look at the figures because several of the figures still haven’t changed. I also have a fifth-edition Remington, a very early US Pharmacopia and some original Medicinal Chemistry textbooks. I also love to collect movie posters. If you come to my house, I have a whole hallway just lined with old movie posters.”
Q: If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be?
A: “There have been many famous pharmacists and pharmacy researchers, and I would pick one of those. There was a dean at the University of Michigan who was famous for revising the pharmacy curriculum named Albert Benjamin Prescott. He has always been a little bit of a hero of mine because he took a lot of heat when he did that. I would love to sit down with him just to pick his brain and find out what that was like.”
