NIAAA Diretor; Senior Investigator
NIH
George F. Koob, PhD is Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism where he oversees a wide range of alcohol-related research, including genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, prevention, and treatment.
As an authority on alcoholism, drug addiction and stress, he has contributed to our understanding of the neurocircuitry associated with the acute reinforcing effects of alcohol and drugs of abuse and the neuroadaptations of the reward and stress circuits associated with the transition to dependence. Dr. Koob has published over 750 peer reviewed papers and several books including the “Neurobiology of Addiction,” a comprehensive treatise on emerging research in the field, and a textbook for upper division undergraduates and graduate students called “Drugs, Addiction and the Brain.” He has mentored 12 PhD students, 84 post-doctoral fellows, and 11 K99’s.
He received his PhD in Behavioral Physiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. He spent much of his early career at the Scripps Research Institute as the Director of the Alcohol Research Center, and as Professor and Chair of the Scripps’ Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders. He has also served as a researcher in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Arthur Vining Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dr. Koob is the recipient of many honors, including membership in the National Academy of Medicine and award of the Legion of Honor (Knight of the Legion of Honor, France).
