Alan Leshner is a scientist and academic from the United States.

Education

Leshner received an undergraduate degree with Honors in

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

from

Franklin and Marshall College Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It employs 175 full-time faculty members and has a student body of approximately 2,400 full-time students. It was founded upon the merger of Frankli ...

in 1965. He earned an M.S. in physiological psychology from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

in 1967, and a Ph.D. degree in physiological psychology from Rutgers in 1969.

Academia

Leshner spent 10 years at

Bucknell University Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering. ...

, where he was Professor of Psychology. He has also held long-term appointments at the Postgraduate Medical School in

Budapest, Hungary Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of ...

, at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, and as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between

hormone A hormone (from the Greek participle , "setting in motion") is a class of signaling molecules in multicellular organisms that are sent to distant organs by complex biological processes to regulate physiology and behavior. Hormones are required ...

s and

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

, and has published over 200 papers for both the scientific and lay communities on the biology of behavior, science and technology policy, science education, and public engagement with science.

Public service

Leshner served as director of the

National Institute on Drug Abuse The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is a United States federal government research institute whose mission is to "advance science on the causes and consequences of drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual a ...

(NIDA) from 1994 to 2001. One of the scientific institutes of the

U.S. National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1 ...

, NIDA supports over 85 percent of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction. Before becoming director of NIDA, Leshner was the deputy director and acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He went to NIMH from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(NSF), where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, science policy and science education. Dr. Leshner has served on many non-profit boards and committees. Most recently he has been Chair of the Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and Chair of the Health and Medicine Division Advisory Committee of the National Research Council.

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Leshner was the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS) and Executive Publisher of the journal

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

from December 2001-February 2015. AAAS, founded in 1848, is the world's largest, multi-disciplinary scientific and engineering society.

Honors

Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS, the National Academy of Public Administration, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

, and many other professional societies. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He received the Walsh McDermott Medal from the National academy of Medicine in 2015.

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

appointed Dr. Leshner to the National Science Board in 2004. He was reappointed to the NSB by President Obama in 2011. He also has been awarded seven honorary Doctor of Science degrees, including one from

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

in May 2014.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leshner, Alan I. Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Living people 1944 births 20th-century American psychologists 21st-century American psychologists Members of the National Academy of Medicine