Alan I. Leshner with Dean Holly Smith

Alan I. Leshner received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Rutgers in 1969, under the direction of George Collier. Dr. Leshner taught and did research at Bucknell University, where he published prolifically and authored a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior. He then moved to the National Science Foundation, thence to the National Institutes of Health, where he served as Deputy Director and then Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He then became Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and, in 2001, accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he is also Executive Publisher of Science. Dr. Leshner is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Science Board, a Fellow of the AAAS, and is a recipient of the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award, conferred by President Clinton in 1996, among many honors. In all this, he has been an unwavering champion of the scientific enterprise.