Mariko Hasebe, a pharmaceutical sciences graduate student working under Professor Lian Yu was awarded the 2014 Zaman Saroya Award.

Hasebe was selected due to her excellence in pharmaceutical sciences research, her past leadership efforts on behalf of the UW-Madison student chapter of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, her contributions to the graduate recruiting and admissions committee, and her School citizenship.

Hasebe, who is originally from Tokyo, earned a bachelor’s degree from UW-Madison in biochemistry in 2008 and began graduate studies in 2009. Her doctoral work, which she expects to complete by December 2014, has focused on the surface crystallization of amorphous pharmaceuticals using high-resolution microscopy and computer modeling. Her work discovered the mechanism of fast crystal growth on the surface of molecular glasses, which is an important finding for developing stable amorphous materials for many applications ranging from pharmaceutics to bio-preservation to electronics.

The Zaman Saroya Award was established in 1992 to help promote excellence in research and scholarship and keep alive the memory of two young scientists, Dr. Razia Zaman and Dr. Shahanara Zaman, who passed away in 1992.