Danielle Dick named Director of Rutgers Addiction Center

January 12, 2022

Dear RBHS Community Members,

We excited to announce that, Danielle Dick, PhD, has been appointed Director of the new Rutgers University Addiction Research Center (RuARC) and the Gregory Q. Brown Chair in Cell Biology and Neuroscience. Dr. Dick will begin her work at Rutgers on January 18, 2022.

As a component of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute, RuARC engages faculty across all Rutgers schools and campuses with expertise in addiction prevention, research, treatment, education, and public policy. RuARC is the only comprehensive addiction center in New Jersey with the capacity to impact the addiction epidemic through cutting edge approaches from precision medicine preclinical research, treatment and care of individuals and families coping with addiction, public policy innovation and reform, and inter-professional education of clinical, research, and criminal justice workforces. 

In the role of Director, Dr. Dick will build collaborations among scientists with the multidisciplinary expertise to advance our understanding of the causes of opioid addiction and other substance use disorders. Dr. Dick will also assume a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry in Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and will be a core member of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. 

Dr. Dick joins us from Virginia Commonwealth University where she currently serves as distinguished commonwealth professor. She is a national leader in substance use and mental health research with a portfolio of strong, externally-funded research programs. Her combination of scholarly productivity and accomplishments, administrative experience, history of community engagement, and passion for translating research into clinical advances that improve human health, make her the ideal candidate to lead RuARC.  

Dr. Dick will bring great distinction to Rutgers University and value to the communities we serve.

Dr. Dick was identified after an exhaustive national search led by the Brain Health Institute and a search committee from across Rutgers entities. We would like to thank Dr. Frank Ghinassi who chaired this committee, along with the members of the search committee, listed below, for this successful search.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Dick and welcoming her to Rutgers University. 

Sincerely,

Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH
Chancellor, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences
Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, Rutgers University

Gary Aston Jones, PhD
Director, Rutgers Brain Health Institute

Carlos Pato, MD
Executive Chair of Psychiatry, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences

RBHS Director of Rutgers University Addiction Research Center Search Committee

Frank Ghinassi, PhD (chair)
Judith Barberio, PhD, RN
Kevin Beck, PhD
Nina Cooperman, PsyD
Christine Delnevo, PhD, MPH
Denise Hien, PhD
John Hoffman, JD
Morgan James, PhD
Petros Levounis, MD
Lia Nower, JD, PhD
R. Christopher Pierce, PhD
John Pintar, PhD
Dipak Sarkar, PhD, DPhil
Anthony Tobia, MD
Jill Williams, MD
David Zald, PhD
Erin Zerbo, MD