Prof. (Dr.) Shital Mahindra Maru is a distinguished academic leader, pharmaceutical scientist, and registered pharmacist with over two decades of experience in higher education, research, and health systems strengthening. She currently is on secondment from the University if Nairobi and serves as the Dean of the School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at United States International University–Africa (USIU-Africa), Nairobi, where she provides strategic leadership in academic programming, research, innovation, and institutional partnerships.

Prof Maru’s expertise spans pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical quality systems, regulatory affairs, and health products supply chain management, with a strong focus on low- and middle-income country contexts. She is widely recognized for her work in innovative drug delivery systems, including pediatric formulations, and for advancing pharmaceutical quality assurance through frameworks such as Quality by Design (QbD), WHO Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and global regulatory standards.

She holds a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Nairobi, complemented by a Commonwealth Scholarship at the University of Bradford, UK, and an MBA from the University of Liverpool, UK. Her academic foundation is further strengthened by a Master of Pharmacy (Pharmaceutics) and a Bachelor of Pharmacy from RGUHS, Bengaluru, India.

Over her career, Prof. Maru has held several senior academic and administrative roles, including Associate Professor at the University of Nairobi and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacy Practice for a decade. She has successfully led and managed multiple internationally funded research and capacity-building projects, supervised numerous postgraduate and doctoral students, and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.

A trusted policy advisor, she contributes to national and regional pharmaceutical policy development and serves on expert committees for regulatory bodies, including the Pharmacy and Poisons Board of Kenya, Kenya BIOVAX, Ministry of Health Kenya, University of Rwanda, East African Community (EAC) and many more. Her work continues to shape pharmaceutical education, pharmaceutical industry in Sub Saharan Africa, pharmaceutical research, and health systems strengthening across Africa