AAE professor Alina Alexeenko, alongside a Purdue postdoctoral researcher and multiple alumni, received a best-paper award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences (AAPS).

AAPS named “Best Practices and Guidelines (2022) for Scale-Up and Tech Transfer in Freeze-Drying Based on Case Studies” as a recipient of their Outstanding Manuscript Award in December 2025.

The manuscript describes the team’s research about the complicated and non-uniform process of freeze-drying, a technology essential to preserving many pharmaceuticals. The paper provides advice to maximize the efficiency of the process and minimize product loss during scale-up and transfer. Their research focused on the factors affecting the scale-up and transfer during the drying stages. The second part of the paper gives additional advice about these practices based on the results their research yielded.

AAE professor Alina Alexeenko co-authored the paper alongside several other Boilermakers, including: postdoctoral researcher Petr Kazarin, corresponding author; AAE alumni Vaibhav Kshirsagar (MSAAE) and Gayathri Shivkumar (MSAAE, PhD AAE); Chemical Engineering alumnus Steve Nail; and Greg Sacha, alumnus of Purdue's Industrial and Physical Pharmacy program.