Presenting Author
Wake Forest School of Medicine
I have been conducting behavioral neuropharmacology research my entire career, beginning as an undergraduate at Wayne State University working in Alice Young’s laboratory with morphine-dependent rat models. My graduate education was at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Travis Thompson and my post-doctoral training was with James E. Barrett at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), where I learned a great deal about animal models of affective disorders, especially predictive models of anxiolytic drug actions. After leaving USUHS in 1988, I spent 4 years training with William L. Woolverton at the University of Chicago using several nonhuman primate models of cocaine abuse. I joined the faculty in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 1992 as an Assistant Professor and I became a tenured full Professor in 2002. My research focuses on brain dopamine and kappa opioid receptor function and nonhuman primate models of human disease. I have been working with catheterized nonhuman primate models for nearly 35 years and with PET imaging for over 25 years. My research examines individual differences in drug effects, including factors mediating vulnerability, maintenance and treatment efficacy, highlighting sex differences, age, social rank and drug history as important organismal variables that influence outcome. My laboratory uses models of drug self-administration and drug discrimination to study the abuse liability, brain changes and treatment effects of several drugs of abuse including cocaine, nicotine, THC, oxycodone and methamphetamine. We also examine chronic drug treatments and incorporate models of cognition and the use of telemetry devices to study physiology and EEG sleep/wake patterns. For over two decades, my laboratory has utilized an extremely novel and translational homologous animal model of substance abuse involving nonhuman primate social behavior and intravenous drug self-administration; the original studies involving socially housed male monkeys was recognized with a MERIT Award from NIDA. I have mentored 5 post-doctoral fellows, 11 Ph.D. students, 2 M.S. students and served on 26 dissertation committees. I am past Director of the Graduate Program in Physiology and Pharmacology, past Chair of ASPET’s Behavioral Pharmacology Division, past Board member of the College of Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) and served on NIDA Council from 2011-2015. I was the recipient of the 2015 CPDD Mentorship Award. In 2016, Wake Forest School of Medicine established an institutional center focused on substance abuse research, the Center for Addiction Research (CFAR) and, since its inception, I have served as the Director.