The NIDA International Program provided full-tuition scholarships to researchers from Louisiana, Maryland, and New York to participate in the 2016 Dutch Summer Institute on Alcohol, Drugs, and Addiction.
Adrienne McGinn, a Ph.D. candidate at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, conducts research on the neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to drug and alcohol dependence and the effects of context on relapse. She hopes to focus her career on evidence-based science policy.
Christopher Seitz-Brown is a graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of Maryland in College Park. He investigates treatment interventions for substance use disorders and serves as the liaison between the research laboratory and a residential substance use treatment facility, which led to his interest in drug policy.
Adelya Urmanche, a graduate research assistant at the New York University Center for Neural Science, studies the evolution and dynamics of behavioral and neural correlates of impulsive decisionmaking during treatment of opioid use disorders. She is a member of the New York NGO Committee on Drugs (NYNGOC). The NYNGOC, which represents more than 100 civil society organizations from around the globe, provides a platform for discussion of drugs and drug-related subjects and interfaces with the United Nations to collaborate on solutions to global drug issues.
The multidisciplinary summer training program in addiction research was held July 10–21, 2016, at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Participants included graduate and postdoctoral students, physicians, outreach workers, and program administrators. They joined addiction professionals to learn about the intersection of policy models, prevention, and evidence-based treatment and ways to bridge the gap between research and practice. Dennis McCarty, Ph.D., Oregon Health and Science University, is academic director of the Dutch Summer Institute.