Alan Leshner

Alan Leshner is a scientist, educator and public servant from the United States.

Leshner received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College in 1965. He earned an M.S. in physiological psychology from Rutgers University in 1967, and a Ph.D. degree in physiological psychology from Rutgers in 1969.

Leshner spent 10 years at Bucknell University, where he was Professor of Psychology. He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in Budapest, Hungary, at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

He is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior, and has published over 150 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on the biology of behavior, science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.

Leshner served as Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994-2001. One of the scientific institutes of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIDA supports over 85 percent of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.

Before becoming Director of NIDA, Leshner was the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He went to NIMH from the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, science policy and science education.

...
Wikipedia