Caryn Lerman, Ph.D., is the Mary W. Calkins Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also Director of Penn’s NIH-funded Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Nicotine Addiction, and the Interim Director of the Abramson Cancer Center. Dr. Lerman’s research interests focus on nicotine addiction pharmacogenetics and medication development. Her recent work incorporates neuroimaging technologies to elucidate the neural substrates of nicotine addiction and to validate neuroimaging biomarkers for risk stratification and targeted therapy. The ultimate goal of her research program is to translate these findings to clinical practice in the form of personalized medicine for smoking cessation. Dr. Lerman recently received a Pharmacogenetic Research Network grant from the NIH to lead a landmark multi-institutional prospective pharmacogenomic trial of nicotine dependence treatment. Dr. Lerman’s awards and honors include membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the APA Award for Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology, the American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) Cullen Award for Tobacco Research, and the Alton Ochsner Award for Research Relating Tobacco and Health. She is a past president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, the primary international society for nicotine addiction scientists. She has over 300 publications and has been the Principal Investigator on 11 R01s, a U01, and a Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center P50 grant, which is now in its 12th year.
