Hayat Onyuksel is Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her BS Degree in Pharmacy from Ankara University, Turkey and Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutics from the University of London. After post doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, and her early research career at the Ankara University, she joined UIC research community as an assistant professor of pharmaceutics and has since worked in the area of drug delivery. Her research specifically deals with targeted nanosized lipid-based drug carriers to address solubility, stability and safety problems of small organic molecules or peptide/protein drugs for parenteral delivery. She has over 110 scientific papers and 9 issued patents. Most of her patents are on targeted nanomedicines.
She is a member of several professional organizations including the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, American Academy of Nanomedicine and Controlled Release Society. She is on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine, Journal of Pharmaceutical Development and Technology, Journal of Bionanoscience, and Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology. She was the UIC Inventor of the Year, and Woman of the Year in 2003. She is selected as AAPS Fellow in 2006 and in 2008 she is selected as a standing member of NIH NANO study session. In 2008 she also received the UIC Graduate Mentoring Award.