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Grigson presents inaugural lecture, “Addiction: Liking, Wanting and Needing”

Patricia Sue Grigson, MS, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine, presented her inaugural lecture, “Addiction: Liking, Needing and Wanting,” on Feb. 12, 2020, in the College’s Junker Auditorium.

Dr. Grigson joined Penn State College of Medicine in 1990 as a postdoctoral fellow working with Ralph Norgren. She then accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the College of Medicine in 1995. Since this time, she and her students have studied individual vulnerabilities to addiction, factors that reduce or accentuate the development of addiction and, along with her colleagues, novel interventions for the treatment of the disease in rats and humans.

Dr. Grigson has received 30 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health and from the Pennsylvania Department of Health CURE funding. She is the recipient of a MERIT Award and currently is co-PI on a UG3 grant awarded via the HEALing Initiative undertaken by the NIH to combat the opioid crisis.

Dr. Grigson was the recipient of the College of Medicine’s Annual Hinkle Society Junior Investigator Award in 2000, and in 2004, she received the Alan N. Epstein Research Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.

Dr. Grigson co-founded the Penn State Hershey Organization for the Advancement of Women (now called the Penn State Commission for Women in Hershey) and she, along with her colleagues, founded Penn State Addiction Center for Translation.

Watch the lecture recording

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