Pauline van der Wijst-Janssen, PhD, of DFE Pharma, won the CPHI Pharma Award for Future Leader. In this interview with PharmTech, she provides advice for scientists looking to advance to leadership roles.
Pauline van der Wijst-Janssen, PhD, product development manager and global technical lead at DFE Pharma, won the 2026 CPHI Milan Future Leader Award at CPHI Milan, which was held from October 6-8. In an interview with PharmTech, Van der Wijst-Janssen discussed what the award means to her and gave advice for scientists in the pharmaceutical industry who are interested in moving into leadership roles. She also talked about the importance of collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers in the excipient world.
She called the award unexpected and somewhat overwhelming. It gave her a moment to reflect on the wider contribution of her work, which she stressed depends on colleagues, research partners, and customers. She also welcomed the attention it brings to excipients, which are often treated as the background of a formulation. Excipients, she said, can strongly influence how reliably a medicine is manufactured.
Van der Wijst-Janssen, who has a focus on excipients in continuous manufacturing, described her work as connecting material science with the practical manufacturing and development challenges customers face. She explained how excipient properties and variability affect process performance and final product quality, and how it is important to bring together what the supplier understands, what regulators require, what equipment needs to run reliably, and what customers need for their formulations. For her, the question is not whether an excipient meets a specification, but why it works and how it keeps working.
Productive partnerships start with understanding the need behind a request, she said. A request for a tighter particle size specification, for example, may really be about feeding consistency or a regulatory filing concern, and each calls for a different solution. Collaboration works less well when openness is limited, when talks center only on specifications, or when suppliers are brought in only after problems emerge. Then the focus shifts to treating symptoms rather than root causes.
Her advice to scientists is to treat technical depth and leadership as connected and to keep asking what end customers need. She also urged them to learn to explain their findings to non-scientists, and said leaders don’t need to know everything themselves.
Dr. Pauline Janssen is Product Development Manager and Global Technical Lead at DFE Pharma. With a background in physical chemistry and powder technologies, she leads a team of product developers creating science-based solutions for pharmaceutical applications. Pauline has set product development priorities and supported her team’s growth, with a focus on continuous improvement and project delivery.
As Global Technical Lead, Pauline connects fundamental science with customer needs. She develops excipient application knowledge and shares insights through peer-reviewed publications and technical materials. Working with customers and partners worldwide, she uses their input to guide innovation and address formulation challenges.
Her recognition as winner of the Future Leader category of the CPHI Pharma Awards 2026 highlights her scientific contributions and leadership in pharmaceutical excipient innovation.
