Nora Volkow

Nora Volkow is director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, since 2003. She pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate the effects of drugs and has demonstrated that drug addiction is a brain disease. Volkow previously held leadership positions at the US Energy Department’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, including nuclear medicine director, and was a psychiatry professor and associate dean of SUNY-Stony Brook medical school. She’s published more than 600 scientific articles and edited three books, and her honors include being named to the TIME 100 list, one of Newsweek’s 20 people to watch, and U.S. News & World Report’s Innovator of the Year.