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Ricky N. Bluthenthal, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Social Justice and a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Institute for Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He received a BA in History and Sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz and a PhD in sociology from the University of California Berkeley. His research has established the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs, tested novel interventions and strategies to reduce HIV risk and improve HIV testing among injection drug users and men who have sex with men, documented how community conditions contribute to health disparities, and examined health policy implementation. His current studies include an observational cohort study of how cannabis legalization impacts use patterns and health outcomes of cannabis and opioids among people who inject drugs and a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a single session intervention to reduce injection initiation risk behaviors among established people who inject drugs. Dr. Bluthenthal has authored or co-authored over 180 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Addiction, and Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research among others.

JOHN D. CLAPP is a professor at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Clapp is known internationally for his research and translational work in the field of alcohol problem prevention. A fellow in the American Academy of Health Behavior, Clapp is currently studying the system dynamics of drinking events with a team of engineers and computer scientists with the goal of developing “smart” real-time prevention applications. He has published more than 100 journal articles, with his work appearing in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, among numerous other top research journals. Clapp has been awarded more than $32 million in grants and contracts (NIAAA, NIDA, U.S. Department of Education, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation) and has been principal investigator on over 20 funded projects. Clapp was the founding co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. As a leader in the prevention of alcohol-related problems experienced by college students, he served six years as the director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery. He also served on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention National Advisory Council. Clapp’s work and expertise has been featured in numerous international media outlets, with coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, ABC National News, among numerous others. To reference the work of John Clapp online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "John Clapp, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)

Daryl L. DaviesPhD

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education & Professor of Clinical Pharmacy

Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy

Daryl Davies is associate dean for undergraduate education and a professor in the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the USC School of Pharmacy. As associate dean, he is responsible for the ongoing development and management of the school’s undergraduate majors and minors. Davies is also the director of the master’s program in management of drug development in the Department of Regulatory and Quality Sciences and undergraduate faculty adviser for the Trojan Admission Pre-Pharmacy (TAP) program. He is a mentor in the STAR program—a cooperative venture in science education between the USC Health Sciences Campus and Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in East Los Angeles—after several years serving as the program’s director.

In addition to his educational activities, Davies leads a research team at USC that is working to discover and develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and alcoholism. He is considered a pioneer by his peers in the field of purinergic receptors and their role in central nervous system regulation of alcohol-induced changes in alcohol intake and signaling. He also is one of the lead faculty members in the USC Institute for Addiction Science.

Davies is a firm believer in using an interdisciplinary approach. To this end, his group works with a team of collaborators that use a combination of pharmacological, toxicological, electrophysiological, molecular, computational chemistry, molecular modeling and regulatory expertise to discover and develop new drugs.

Adam Leventhal, Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine and Psychology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, is an addiction psychologist and public health scientist. Dr. Leventhal is the Founding Director of the USC Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory (USC-HEAL; heal.usc.edu), a group of six faculty investigators and 30 staff and trainees who study the causes, consequences, treatment, and prevention of addiction and mental illness across the lifespan. Having been awarded more than $40M in grant funding from the NIH and other agencies, USC-HEAL's current areas of focus are: (1) adolescent and young adult use of tobacco, cannabis, and opioids; (2) the co-occurrence of addiction and mental illness; (3) the development of new medications to promote smoking cessation; (4) science to inform public policies for regulating tobacco and other consumer products; and (5) cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention.

Dr. Leventhal is also the Founding Director of the USC Institute for Addiction Science (USC-IAS; ias.usc.edu), a university-wide initiative that supports transdisciplinary science and education for a network of 40+ faculty addiction experts across 5 schools and colleges at USC.

Dr. Leventhal has authored over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including publications in JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and other journals. His work has been covered by the Associated Press, NBC Nightly News, New York Times, and other media outlets. Dr. Leventhal is active in policy arenas, having served on expert panels on the health effects of e-cigarettes and tobacco products for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the US Surgeon General. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and American Psychological Association and recipient of awards for early and mid-career contributions to science and mentoring. His personal interests include running, playing guitar, watching football, and spending time with friends and family.