It wasn’t on her schedule to meet Jürgen Venitz, M.D., Ph.D., during her graduate school interview. But after several faculty urged her to speak with him based on her interests, Sue Learned, M.D., Pharm.D., Ph.D., says the time Dr. Venitz gave her at the end of that interview day has made a lasting impact on her life.

“You can imagine my surprise and delight to meet Dr. Venitz, who looked like he could be 7 feet tall, super thin, but whose booming voice and laugh immediately put me at ease,” said Sue Learned, who had been completing her medical residency at the time. “Bottom line, those two-plus hours of time sealed the deal for me, and I walked out of the School of Pharmacy that afternoon floating and having already made the choice to come there and work with Jürgen.” Learned would graduate from VCU in 1997, becoming one of the first in a long line of Pharm.D./Ph.D. dual degree program graduates who lovingly call themselves Jürgenites.

It’s this type of moment – like so many others where Venitz dedicated his time and attention to mentoring others – that still resonates with many of his students and even his colleagues to this day.

Jürgen Venitz, M.D., Ph.D., a longtime professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics whose three decades at Virginia Commonwealth University included notable research contributions to the field of pharmacokinetics, educating hundreds of students across the school’s Pharm.D. and graduate programs, and mentoring dozens more in the Pharm.D./Ph.D. dual degree program he championed throughout his time at VCU School of Pharmacy, passed away on Jan. 15. He was 70.

Born into a family of coal miners in the town of Sulzbach in Saarland, Germany, Venitz had an interest in the sciences from a young age, earning his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Universitaet des Saarlandes in Germany before starting his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida in 1985. There, he became friends with UF faculty member Kamlesh Thakker, Ph.D., who had graduated from VCU’s Ph.D. program in 1983. Thakker spoke highly of Bill Barr, Pharm.D., Ph.D., who soon became chair of what is now the Department of Pharmaceutics, and Barr invited Venitz to speak at VCU.

In 1988, Barr would hire Venitz as a research assistant professor and medical director of the university’s BioPharm Center for Clinical Research, where he led clinical trials in units spanning the university and what is now VCU Health System. A year later, Venitz became an assistant professor and director of the Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics Research Laboratory.

Throughout his time at VCU, Venitz became a nationally- and internationally-recognized researcher in the field of pharmacokinetics, being inducted as an AAPS Fellow and serving throughout his career as a consultant and advisor to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including as chair of the FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee.

But just as important as his big-picture contributions were his smaller interactions that made a profound impact. His colleagues and students recognized the joy it brought to Venitz when he helped ensure students thoroughly understood what they were learning – and why it was important. Patty Slattum, Pharm.D., Ph.D., who became one of Venitz’s first mentees when he arrived in 1988, saw this in action as a student, a postdoc and, later, a faculty colleague.

“Jürgen had a real gift for helping to more than just explain, but to take very conceptually complicated things and frame them in a way that you could make sense out of them,” said Slattum, now a professor emerita at VCU School of Pharmacy. “I remember he used to say, ‘We study sources of variability in the way that people respond to medicines, the doses they need and what happens. We study what makes us different from each other – whether it's genetics or whether you’re an older adult, all those things that contribute to our unique selves that are going to change the outcome we might get from a medication.’

“Just that whole concept alone – understanding where your work fits into the bigger scheme and being able to then tell that to other people – that’s just an example of helping me to frame and conceptualize what I do. And he was an absolute master at that.”

Venitz quickly became a beloved educator, earning VCU School of Pharmacy’s very first Excellence in Teaching Award and, later, the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

“I worked with Jürgen on many research and academic projects during his tenure as a professor in the School of Pharmacy,” said Michael Hindle, Ph.D., professor and interim chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics. “His passion and enthusiasm to train and educate our students was evident in everything he undertook. They were his number one priority, and his students loved him for that.”

During his time at VCU, Venitz championed the development of our combined-entry Pharm.D./Ph.D. dual degree program, which launched in 1995 as a successor to the school’s post-B.S. Pharm.D./Ph.D. program. Slattum was one of the program’s first graduates.

“The effort that he invested in our dual degree program – at every step, at every barrier, at every change the university would make – he made sure that the boat was floating and that those students were getting a quality experience,” said Slattum, who would go on to serve as interim associate dean for research and graduate studies, managing our graduate and dual degree programs. “He understood the importance of their clinical training and their research training; he truly understood the value of that bridge between practice and research, and he could advocate for that in the process.”

After graduating from the dual degree program, Slattum became a postdoctoral fellow in Venitz’s lab. She saw him in the classroom, pioneering active learning and hands-on teaching – long before they became common teaching methods – and demonstrating compassionate leadership, even in challenging situations.

“I learned the importance of not just the technical stuff, but the culture in which we do our work, the ethics that surround it, the things that are happening at a societal level that impact the work that you do and how it gets translated,” Slattum said. “I hope I carried that on in my work with my own students.”

Outside the lab, clinical research unit and classroom, Venitz was a husband and father of two, an avid reader and a lifelong sports fan, particularly of basketball, which he played in his younger years. At 6’6”, Venitz shared his height with his favorite player, Michael Jordan, and picked up the nickname “Dr. J” for another favorite player, Julius “Dr. J” Erving.

“Jürgen served as Vice Chair in Pharmaceutics for many years; he was passionate about our school and department, and his retirement and now, his passing, leaves a huge legacy that we should reflect on and celebrate,” Hindle said. “I have no doubt we will continue to hear how Jürgen touched the lives of our faculty and students. He was irreplaceable, and I will certainly miss my conversations with him about our program, our research and even why the Germans keep beating the English at football.”

Ever the team player, Venitz held a particular point of pride in holding appointments in all three School of Pharmacy departments. “I’m an interdisciplinary kind of guy,” he said in a 2009 interview. “I enjoy that we have fences low enough that we can step over them and work together. You can’t translate if you don’t have a bench and a bedside!”

Martin Safo, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, saw the benefits of Dr. Venitz’s interest in stepping over fences – the two worked together on drug development projects over the years. Venitz, Safo recalls, was “a scientist of exceptional rigor and integrity.”

“For almost three decades, Jürgen was not only a valued and indispensable member at VCU, but also a trusted friend. He embodied the highest ideals of teaching, scholarship, and leadership without ego. His passing is a profound loss to all who had the privilege of working with him and learning from his wisdom, generosity, and quiet strength,” Safo said. “Our collaborations were marked by his clarity of thought and his ability to elevate every project through careful analysis and sound judgment. Working with Jürgen has been instrumental in shaping me as a scientist and teacher, and in how I think critically about science and research.”

In reflecting on Venitz’s impact, Safo, Learned and Slattum all shared sentiments about Venitz’s generosity of time.

“One thing that really stands out to me is the way that he organized himself and his work, in that he had a lot of things that he was interested in and that he was doing, but he always had time,” Slattum said. “He was busy, but he would make space for his mentees, for his colleagues. He loved a good scientific discussion. And it was fun to engage in it because he loved it.”

Slattum and Learned fondly remembered Venitz’s many “Jürgenisms” – his most common refrains – and recalled the origins of the “Jürgenites,” a term coined by Jocelyn Leu (Pharm.D./Ph.D., ’95) to describe the group of alumni Venitz mentored who meet every year at the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) Annual Meeting – and wherever they cross paths.

“Along with my father, Dr. Venitz has had the largest impact on my career and my life,” said Sue Learned, who serves as president and founder of Learned Consulting Group, LLC. “What I think Jürgen influenced the most is how to be an authentic leader, regardless of the environment. By being an authentic leader himself, he was an amazing role model for me, especially when I started being offered roles of increasing responsibility and oversight of staff in several countries, many of whom were substantially older than me and came from different cultures. Ultimately, it was because of this large impact that spurred me to initiate the endowed combined degree scholarship in Dr. Venitz’s name.”

Learned, who is now a member of the MCV Foundation Board of Trustees, made a lead gift toward establishing the Jürgen Venitz Combined Degree Scholarship for Pharm.D./Ph.D. dual degree students, announced at the school’s 2019-20 Research and Career Day, to honor Venitz’s years of mentorship. Learned’s admiration for Venitz, a 2020 MCV Foundation article stated, is shared by many around the world. Gifts flowed in from Taiwan and Jordan to support the scholarship fund.

“I was humbled and touched,” Venitz said at the time. “I was very emotional. I never expected this. One of the main reasons why I joined and stayed in academia was the ability to teach — including mentoring. All the little things that you do to help students figure out what to do career wise.”

After 34 years of mentoring others at VCU School of Pharmacy, Venitz retired in 2022.

“Dr. Venitz dedicated his time over decades training the next generation of pharmaceutical scientists, health care providers and pharmacist-scientists,” said Dean K.C. Ogbonna, Pharm.D., M.S.H.A. “His contributions in education, research and mentorship have helped make our school what it is today, and we are grateful for him and his lasting impact.”

Venitz is survived by wife Pamela, daughter Heather, son Wil, and his siblings, nieces, nephews and two grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held at 1 p.m. Feb. 28 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Goochland. An obituary and message board can be found here.