Brazilian Researchers Establish Forum, CPDD Travel Award

Silvia Bassani Schuch, M.D.Silvia Bassani Schuch, M.D., Brazil, has been awarded the first James Inciardi Award for Young Investigators.

The James Inciardi Award for Young Investigators provides air travel to the NIDA International Forum and College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) meetings for a young investigator from the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Silvia Bassani Schuch, M.D., has received the first award for her NIDA International Forum poster presentation, “Accumbens volumes are reduced among crack cocaine users.” Carl G. Leukefeld, University of Kentucky, chaired the 2016 selection committee. The award was established in 2015 through an annual donation from Dr. Catia Olivier Mello and the Brazilian center’s director, 1993–1994 NIDA Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow Flavio Pechansky, M.D., Ph.D. Drs. Mello and Pechansky created the award in memory of the late James A. Inciardi, University of Delaware. “Dr. Inciardi was the main catalyst of the center along 18 years of intense collaboration,” said Dr. Pechansky. “The award is a tribute to the spirit of encouragement of Prof. Inciardi—in particular to young talents—and aims at stimulating young investigators of our center to develop their professional careers through contact with one of the main world events in the field—CPDD and its satellite meetings.”