Professor, University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus
Romañach is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez Campus. He is also Site Leader of the Center for Structured Organic Particulate Systems (http://csops.org), collaborating with researchers from Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Purdue University to improve the way pharmaceuticals, foods and agriculture products are manufactured. He worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 12 years before joining the Chemistry Department in 1999. His research is focused on developing near infrared and Raman spectroscopic methods to achieve real time quality control of pharmaceutical processes, which is summarized in over 60 publications. To date six graduate students have completed their Ph.D. at his research group, and 14 students have completed their M.S. in Chemistry. Romañach wants to embed quality control labs within pharmaceutical manufacturing and use real time analytical measurements to monitor and improve pharmaceutical processes. This approach is now reality at Janssen Ortho LLC in Gurabo, Puerto Rico where his research group developed the real time and at-line methods for the continuous manufacture of Prezista. The continuation of these improvements will require a future generation of pharmaceutical scientists and he has created Pharmaceutical Analytical Chemistry and Chemometrics courses at his university.
He has worked with sampling and analysis of pharmaceutical blends for over 25 years. In 2010, he read Pierre Gy’s “Sampling for Analytical Purposes” and found that TOS provides a much needed insight for the development of real time analytical methods within pharma. TOS has since become an important guiding light in the development of analytical methods in his research laboratory. He is currently collaborating extensively with KHE Consulting on various applications of TOS to pharmaceutical manufacturing.