National Institute on Drug Abuse director to give virtual presentation

Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, will make a virtual presentation to UB at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 1.

Sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences at UB, Volkow’s talk has generated significant interest throughout SUNY and nationwide, with several hundred people already registered. 

Participants are asked to register online.

Volkow, a research psychiatrist, pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate how drug abuse changes the brain. She has also studied how attention deficit disorder and related disorders affect the brain. Recently, she published on how GLP-1 medications might be useful in treating addiction.

A native of Mexico, she earned her medical degree from the National University of Mexico in Mexico City. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians.

Volkow has received numerous international awards for her work, including the International Prize from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research and the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University. She was associate dean at the medical school at Stony Brook University.

Volkow has been named one of Time magazine's Top 100 People Who Shape Our World; one of Newsweek’s20 People to Watch; one of Washingtonian Magazine’s "100 Most Powerful Women"; "Innovator of the Year" by U.S. News & World Report; and one of "34 Leaders Who Are Changing Health Care" by Fortune magazine.

“Volkow has led the change from the punitive approach to addiction of past decades to seeing addiction as a disease that we can treat and prevent,” says Nancy H. Nielsen, senior associate dean for health policy in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “She is a visionary leader in how we treat this condition. Her leadership at NIDA and her entire career has been an inspiration.”