Welcome

Margaret Haney

Dr. Margaret (Meg) Haney is a Professor of Neurobiology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She serves as the Director of the Cannabis Research Laboratory and Co-Director of the Substance Use Research Center. Dr. Haney earned her Ph.D. from Tufts University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médical in Bordeaux, France. She has been a member of the Columbia Psychiatry faculty since 1994.
Dr. Haney and her colleagues have pioneered the development of human laboratory models of Cannabis Use Disorder and Cocaine Use Disorder, allowing them to test the effects of potential pharmacologic and immunologic treatment approaches on a range of drug-related behaviors. Additional interests include investigating the interaction between tobacco cigarette smoking and cannabis intoxication and relapse and assessing the potential therapeutic effects of cannabis and its constituents for various indications, including pain management and appetite enhancement, relative to placebo.
Dr. Haney is best recognized for her expertise in cannabis and cannabinoids. In 2023, she was honored with the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research Award for 'Advancing Cannabis and Cannabinoids as Therapeutics'.

Alex Kwan

Alex Kwan is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. He is broadly interested in the neurobiology of drugs for treating depression. His work revealed how compounds including ketamine and psychedelics impact dendrites and cortical microcircuits to induce neural plasticity. Alex supports open science by posting preprints and sharing data and code for all of the lab’s recent studies. He received a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics at Simon Fraser University in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Cornell University in 2009. From 2013 to 2022, he was a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Outside of the lab, Alex enjoys drinking a good cup of espresso and rock climbing with his kids.

Lorenzo Leggio

Dr. Leggio’s clinical work and clinical research focus on the treatment of alcohol and substance use disorders and their associated medical consequences, especially alcohol-associated liver and cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Leggio’s team and collaborators conduct addiction-related research via human laboratory studies and clinical trials as well as via translational approaches in animal models. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Rome, where he also completed residency and Board Certification in Internal Medicine. He was a postdoctoral research associate in Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University, where he subsequently joined the faculty as Assistant Professor and received funding from NIH and several foundations. In 2012, he was recruited as a joint NIAAA/NIDA Clinical Investigator at the NIH IRP, where he was awarded tenure in 2018 and promoted to Senior Investigator.
Dr. Leggio currently serves as the NIDA Clinical Director and Deputy Scientific Director. He was the founder in 2012 and current Chief of the joint NIDA/NIAAA Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology Section. He was the founder in 2020 and current Chief of the NIDA Translational Addiction Medicine Branch. Dr. Leggio also serves as the Director for the NIDA IRP Translational Analytical Core and senior medical advisor to the NIAAA Director. He is also Adjunct Professor at Brown, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown U. Among other honors, Dr. Leggio received the 2016 Research Society on Alcohol Early Career Investigator Award, the 2018 American College on Neuropsychopharmacology Eva King Killam Award, and the 2020 Society for Neuroscience Jacob P. Waletzky Award.

David Nutt