Conan Kornetsky wins Nathan B. Eddy Award
Conan Kornetsky of MED wins lifetime achievement in addiction research and treatment
At the 2005 annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), Conan Kornetsky, a School of Medicine professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, received the Nathan B. Eddy Award to acknowledge outstanding research efforts that have advanced knowledge in the field of addiction research and treatment.
“He strongly believes that his responsibility was not only to carry out research and give lectures to medical students, but to mentor graduate students. He has found that mentoring graduate students is as reinforcing to him as is the reinforcement of the research itself,” according to a statement from the CPDD.
Kornetsky was born in Portland Maine, graduated from Portland High School in 1943 and after serving in the Army Air Corps, attended the University of Maine, graduating in 1948. He received his Ph.D. in 1952 in Psychology from the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, KY. It was while he was a graduate student that he did his first research on drug addiction at the USPHS Hospital in Lexington, KY. He then joined the research staff of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD and in 1959 he joined the faculty of Boston University School of Medicine.
In 1970, he was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1986, he served as President of Division 28 (Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse) of the American Psychological Association. In 1998, Kornetsky was named Alumnus of the Year by the Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky and in 2002 the College on Problems of Drug Dependence presented him with the Mentorship Award for exemplary mentorship to developing researchers in the field of drug dependence.
The Nathan B. Eddy Memorial Award was established in memory of one of the pioneers in the field of drug dependence, following his death in 1973. The award is presented annually by the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the largest and oldest organization for the scientific study of drug dependence and addictions. The presentation was made in June at the College’s 67th annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.