Dr. McClure earned her BS in Psychology and Neuroscience from Allegheny College and her PhD in Psychology from the University of Florida. The overarching goal of Dr. McClure’s program of research is broadly focused on reducing the harmful impact of cannabis and tobacco/nicotine product use across the lifespan. Her research has focused on refining and evaluating strategies to improve long-term abstinence and prevent relapse, as well as pursuing harm reduction strategies to minimize the adverse impact of substance use; all utilizing technology to improve remote procedures and data quality, as well as to increase reach and accessibility. Dr. McClure is a Principal Investigator on NIDA and NCI-funded studies, as well as Co-Investigator on several NIH-funded projects focused on treatment strategies for tobacco, cannabis, and opioids.

  Dr. Balster’s career has been dedicated to laboratory-based behavioral pharmacology research in addiction. He was the Founding Coordinator for the VCU site for the U.S. State Department Humphrey Fellowship Program in Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment and Policy, and is also a co-founder and co-director of the International Programme in Addiction Studies, an online master’s degree program. From 2006-2015 he co-directed the Virginia Youth Tobacco Project, a statewide coalition of tobacco scientists supported by funds from the Master Settlement Agreement. From 1997-2013 Dr. Balster was the Director of the VCU Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies and from 2011-2012, he was selected as a Jefferson Science Fellow with the Global Health Bureau at the US Agency for International Development and served until 2015 as a Science Advisor for the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition at USAID. He is a PastPresident of the CPDD and a former member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence and the FDA Drug Abuse Advisory Committee. From 1998 to 2010 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. In 2014 he was Chair of the WHO Guideline Development Group on the Management of Opioid Dependence. Dr. Balster serves as a consultant to USAID and the World Health Organization. In addition to publishing more than 285 papers in scientific journals, Dr. Balster has edited two books and authored over 50 book chapters.

 Dr. Kinsey earned his PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from Ohio State University, with postdoctoral training in Pharmacology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently Director of the Center for Advancement in Managing Pain and the Graduate Certificate in Pain Management program at the University of Connecticut. His research on cannabinoid and opioid modulation of pain and inflammation has been continuously funded by NIH for over a decade. He is an advocate for promoting high-quality pain and cannabinoid science and currently serves as Executive Director of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.