The Distinguished Investigator Award honors clinical researchers for meritorious and pioneering work in critical care and for significantly contributing to the understanding of the diseases and treatments of critically ill and injured patients. Dasta will be honored for his many research contributions to the field of critical care pharmacy.

Dasta is celebrated for his early breakthroughs on drug disposition in the critically ill and for applying the principles of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes-based research to the intensive care unit (ICU) environment. His research has improved understanding of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of critical care therapies. It is focused primarily on clinical response, health economics and patient safety of acute care pharmaceuticals, with specific attention to sedation, sepsis, acute renal failure, acute heart failure and anemia, as well as hyponatremia and hypertensive emergencies. In recent years, he has added pharmacoeconomics to his research agenda, looking at cost and resource use of critically ill patients.

Dasta was one of the first pharmacist members of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and helped to establish the role of the pharmacist within the multiprofessional team. In 2000, SCCM honored him by creating the Joseph F. Dasta Critical Care Pharmacy Outcomes Research Grant. He received the SCCM Distinguished Service Award in 2005 and was elected last year to SCCM Council as a member-at-large. He is a Fellow of the ACCM and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. Dasta also serves on the editorial boards of Critical Care Medicine and Annals of Pharmacotherapy.

For more than two decades, he has served as a mentor to young professionals, including 11 residents and nine fellows who have emerged as prominent practitioners, researchers and leaders within the pharmaceutical, clinical and industrial fields.

In addition to being an active teacher and researcher, he has produced an array of scholarly works, including more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and 13 book chapters; he co-edited the seminal book Practice of Critical Care Pharmacy. Dasta has presented more than 70 research abstracts at local, regional, national and international forums and has given in excess of 250 lectures on various topics related to critical care and health outcomes.

Dasta obtained his bachelor’s degree in science in 1974 from the West Virginia University School of Pharmacy, and a Master of Science from The Ohio State University (OSU) where he also completed a residency in hospital pharmacy. His academic career began in 1976 at OSU where he developed one of the first practice sites and post-doctoral training programs in critical care pharmacy. He retired from OSU in 2007 after 31 years of service and now works as a healthcare consultant to pharmaceutical and device companies. He holds appointments as adjunct professor at the University of Texas and as professor emeritus at OSU.