Having been aligned with Florida State University in the College of Medicine since 2005, Dr. Gail T. Galasko has garnered a laudable reputation as a pharmacologist and faculty scholar. As a full professor and course director of systemic medical pharmacology, her duties include teaching pharmacology courses, as well as developing, coordinating and integrating the course curriculum. She boasts over 35 years of expertise teaching pharmacology at several schools, including the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Virginia and Southern Illinois University in the School of Dental Medicine. She has developed curricula, directed and restructured pharmacology courses for medical, dental and pharmacy students and for nurse practitioners, and has participated in major curricular revisions and accreditation self-studies, resulting in much improved teaching outcomes. Additionally, Dr. Galasko has served as an external examiner for pharmacology programs in other schools, thesis adviser for graduate students and member of several student thesis committees, and was a visiting professor at West Virginia University and a visiting scientist at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
As a seasoned scientist and expert in insulin actin and type 2 diabetes, Dr. Galasko has conducted extensive research in signaling and has investigated both inter- and intracellular signaling mechanisms. She has been involved in research on a novel family of signaling molecules, the inositolphosphoglycans (IPGs), which are involved in numerous intracellular effects. Understanding the effects caused by individual IPGs is important in understanding, at a cellular level, what goes wrong in certain disease states, including cancer and diabetes mellitus. Research conducted in Dr. Galasko’s laboratory has notably focused on isolation, identification and determination of action of IPGs. She also holds several patents.
An alumnus of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Dr. Galasko earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, with honors, in 1963 and a Master of Science in chemistry in 1965. She later acquired a ChD at the University of London’s Queen Mary College in 1970 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Since these accomplishments, Dr. Galasko has authored numerous articles in scholarly journals, as well as chapters to books. In recent years, she has authored a chapter in the seventh edition of “Pharmacology and Therapeutics for Dentistry” in 2017 called “Insulin, Oral Hypoglycemics, and Glucagon.”
Dr. Galasko is an elected fellow of the Gemological Association of Great Britain. She is also a member of the International Association of Medical Science Educators, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society for Chemistry. Among other organizations, she is a local member of the Zonta Club of Alton-Wood River, Illinois, where she served as a chairperson from 2004 to 2005. The club is comprised of approximately 40 women who partake in various community projects, and fundraising events to improve the lives of local women and children in the surrounding area. In addition to the local impact, the club is affiliated as a member of Zonta International, for which Dr. Galasko is also a member.
Dr. Galasko is aligned as a member and past president of the Johannesburg Toastmasters Club. Moreover, she has distinguished herself as a life member of Hadassah, an American Jewish volunteer women’s organization, and a member and a past chairperson of women and sciences for the South African Women’s Bureau. A celebrated Marquis listee, Dr. Galasko has been featured in the 65th through 70th editions of Who’s Who in America, the eighth edition of Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare, and the 33rd edition of Who’s Who in the World.
