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Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award for 1990

Dr. Eric Nestler

Dr. Eric Nestler

Dr. Eric Nestler was the winner of the 1990 Jordi-Folch-Pi Memorial Award from the American Society of Neurochemistry. The goal of Dr. Nestler’s research is to better understand the molecular mechanisms of addiction and depression. His research uses animal models of these disorders to identify the ways in which drugs of abuse or stress change the brain to lead to addiction- or depression-like syndromes, and to use this information to develop improved treatments of these disorders. He received his B.A., Ph.D., and M.D. degrees from Yale University, and completed his residency training in psychiatry at McLean Hospital and Yale in 1987. He then served on the Yale faculty from 1987-2000, before moving to Dallas in 2000. Dr. Nestler is currently the Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Dr. Nestler has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, on the National Advisory Mental Health Council for the National Institute of Mental Health, as Council member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and of the Society for Neuroscience, and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression and of Autism Speaks. Dr. Nestler was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1998 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.