NIDA announced the addition of three new members to its National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse at its February meeting:
NIDA Advisors: (Left to right) Dr. R. Dale Walker, Dr. Eric J. Nestler, NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow, and Dr. James L. Sorensen.R. Dale Walker, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry and of public health and preventive medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, as well as director of OHSU's Center for American Indian Health, Education and Research. He also directs the One Sky Center, a national resource for improving prevention and treatment of substance abuse and mental illness among American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D., is chairman of the Department of Neuroscience and director of the Brain Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of addiction and depression is a major focus of his research, which uses animal models of these disorders to identify how stress and drugs of abuse change the brain and lead to addiction- or depression-like syndromes.
James L. Sorensen, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco General Hospital. He also directs the California-Arizona node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network. Dr. Sorensen's research targets effective ways to integrate scientific findings into substance abuse treatment and to prevent and treat AIDS and other infectious diseases in drug-using populations.