Training Faculty
Our training program is designed to inspire the trainees, to motivate and equip them to make high-impact scientific discoveries in the drug abuse field, and to become successful independent scientists. The key to achieving these goals is the quality and commitment of the Core Training mentors. Our Core Training Faculty consist of 12 senior scientists from four different academic departments, each of whom have both research credentials and excellent training records.
The Latest on our Training Faculty
Principal Investigators

Harriet de Wit, PhD
Founder & Primary Investigator, Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, Research Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Background:
Dr. de Wit obtained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, in 1981. Since then she has been associated with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, where she is currently Professor and Director of the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory. In addition to her role as Principal Investigator for several NIH-funded research projects, Dr. de Wit serves as Field Editor for the journal Psychopharmacology and Deputy Editor for Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. She is a consultant to the Food and Drug Administration and serves on several scientific advisory boards at other institutions. She has received several awards for her research, including the Solvay Award for Outstanding Basic Psychopharmacological Research in Affective Disorders in 1999, and the Marian W. Fischman Memorial Lectureship Award in 2009 and the European Behavioral Pharmacology Society Distinguished Investigator Award in 2019.
Research Interests:
Dr. de Wit’s research focuses on the physiological, subjective (i.e., mood-altering) and behavioral effects of drugs in healthy human volunteers. Current projects in her laboratory include: i) investigating individual differences in responses to psychoactive drugs, ii) effects of drugs at different phases of the menstrual cycle, and iii) effects of psychedelic drugs on mood and neural function. The studies are designed to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying motivated behavior and of the processes underlying drug and alcohol use. Ultimately, we hope that studies such as these will help to identify risk factors for excessive drug use, and to predict and prevent adverse responses to drugs.
The Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory
Publicity links:
Can Microdosing Psychedelic Mushrooms Curb your Anxiety?
Study measures effects of LSD microdosing

Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD
Professor, Department of Neurobiology
I investigate the molecular machinery for synaptic plasticity and information processing that underlie reinforcement learning, economic decision making and motor control. Our main approaches include mouse genetics, fly genetics, molecular biology, electrophysiology and animal learning paradigms.
Core Training Faculty

David Gallo, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology
I am interested in the impact of psychoactive drugs on learning and memory, with a focus on the impact of addictive drugs on episodic memory accuracy and distortion. In collaboration with Harriet de Wit, we have uncovered the impact of drugs such as amphetamine and THC (a primary psychoactive ingredient of cannabis) on different stages of memory (e.g., encoding, consolidation, retrieval), false memory creation, and emotional memory biases.

Alfredo J. Garcia III , PhD
Professor, Department of Medicine
Breathing emerges from coordinated interactions across multiple networks throughout the brain. A difficulty in breathing is a common symptom of chronic drug use and in severe cases, a primary cause of mortality during overdose. My research uses cellular and animal models to understand how drugs and the brain environment interact to influence the control of breathing and other neurobiological processes. Current work in the laboratory is focused on understanding how drug-induced changes in blood gases may influence the efficacy of drug action on the neural networks involved with breathing. Our work is focused on improving our mechanistic understanding into the influence of homeostatic context over drug efficacy in the brain.

Chin-Tu Chen, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
Dr. Chen conducts integrative multi-modality molecular imaging in a broad spectrum of imaging-centered topics. Among other projects, he is co-principal investigator with Dr. William Green on a series of studies funded by NIDA on PET imaging of a4b2 nicotinic receptor upregulation and smoking cessation.

William Green, PhD
Professor, Department of Neurobiology
My research is focused on the cell biology of ionotropic neurotransmitter receptors, the receptors responsible for the rapid postsynaptic response in nerve and muscle. These receptors are large oligomeric membrane proteins with subunits surrounding an ion channel that opens when neurotransmitters bind to the receptor. There are two different families of ionotropic neurotransmitter receptors. One family includes nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs), GABA and glycine receptors, and the other family covers the ionotropic glutamate receptors. There are several projects ongoing in my lab characterizing the assembly, trafficking and clustering of these receptors.

Donald Hedeker, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences
My chief expertise is in the development and use of advanced statistical methods for clustered and longitudinal data, with particular emphasis on mixed-effects models. I have collaborated with smoking and nicotine researchers for many years.

Andrea King, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences
My research areas of interest include alcohol response phenotype as a risk factor for future drinking exacerbations and alcohol use disorder, alcohol-smoking interactions, pharmacotherapy and behavioral treatment for alcohol and tobacco use disorders and their co-occurrence, community-based research in underserved populations, and electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use as smoking cue. I have been a PI on NIH-funded research for over 20 years, published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and served in numerous leadership positions for national scientific organizations and locally, including Co-Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control, University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center and past Research Section Chief, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences.

Daniel Margoliash, PhD
Professor, Departments of Organismal Biology and Anatomy & Psychology
My lab investigates the neurobiology and behavior of learned sequential movements, studying song learning and production in songbirds. A major component of the song system includes a pathway involving the basal ganglia and reinforcement learning. In one line of research we are investigating intracellular (“intrinsic”) properties of song system neurons projecting to the basal ganlia that are directly tied to the individual bird’s singing behavior. One set of questions revolves around the role of dopamine and other transmitters in regulating network activity that helps set these properties.

Daniel McGehee, PhD
Professor, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
I investigate the cellular mechanisms underlying nicotine’s rewarding and antinociceptive effects. All drugs of abuse are known to enhance dopamine release from midbrain reward centers and this is a crucial step in the reinforcement of drug-taking behavior. I am specifically investigating the cellular mechanisms that contribute to this change in dopamine output. Most addictive drugs display significant analgesic profiles and our studies are also exploring the influence of nAChRs in pain control circuitry.

Harold Pollack, PhD
Helen Ross Professor, School of Social Service Administration
I co-direct the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the University of Chicago Health Lab. My research interest is in services for severely disadvantaged populations of individuals at the interface between Medicaid and the criminal justice system. As such, I am very familiar with social service and policy issues related to individuals with drug problems. I have also studied the effectiveness of drug courts to reduce the size of the incarcerated drug-offending population. I have served as a policy advisor to previous US Presidents. One example of my outreach efforts is described here.

John Schneider, MD, MPH
Professor, Department of Medicine and Epidemiology
John Schneider MD, MPH is a network epidemiologist and interventionist who examines substance use disorder among most vulnerable populations including those with criminal justice involvement. He focuses on the social and structural factors that create a context of substance use, mental health problems and infectious disease transmission like HIV and STIs. He lead a NIDA analytic Center to develop advanced methods to better understand opioid overdose prevention among criminal justice involved populations with a particular interest in Black/African American community members.

Mark Sheffield, PhD
Professor, Department of Neurobiology
The capacity to acquire, store and recall knowledge of the world through experience and use this knowledge to maximize reward and avoid danger is essential for survival. In humans, this ability is fundamental to our sense of self and is in large part what makes us who we are. The brain’s memory systems are also vulnerable to disease and trauma, such as Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder, and are also greatly impacted by addiction.
My lab uses a combination of approaches to measure the activity of large populations of neurons, dendrites and axons in the hippocampus, which is known to be critical for memory function in both mice and humans, while mice experience virtual environments and are forming or recalling specific memories. We can also use light to control the activity of particular neurons or circuits, giving us a way to control the neural representations and circuits involved in memory.
Together, our aim is to reveal the features of neural function at the level of populations of neurons and brain-wide circuits down to the level of synapses, that allow for the formation and recall of specific memories, and in this way, we hope to provide insight into how these memory systems are altered during addiction and disease.

Ming Xu, PhD
Professor, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
My long-term research interest is to understand mechanisms underlying drug addiction and to find possible treatment. We use behavioral, genetic, anatomical and molecular biological methods. One major research project is to identify mechanisms and neuronal circuits associated with reconsolidation and extinction of cocaine-induced reward memory. Another project is to develop a novel method of using skin stem cells to deliver therapeutic genes to combat the abuse of cocaine, ethanol, nicotine and their co-abuse.
External Advisory Committee

Kathryn Cunningham, PhD
Director of the Center for Addiction Research, Chauncey Leake Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Vice Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, The University of Texas Medical Branch

Jakie McGinty, PhD
Professor of Neuroscience & Director of the Neuroscience Institute, Medical University of South Carolina

Jill B. Becker, PhD
Patricia Y. Gurin Collegiate Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan
Resource Faculty
Demet Araç, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Timothy Carroll, PhD
Professor, Department of Radiology
Daniel Fridberg, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience
Chuan He, PhD
HHMI Investigator, John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Chemistry
Gregory Karczmar, PhD
Professor, Department of Radiology
Narayanan (Bobby) Kasthuri, MD, DPhil
Neuroscience Researcher, Argonne National Laboratory, Assistant Professor (adjunct), Department of Neurobiology
Sarah Keedy, PhD
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience