Leslie Morrow, PhD, John Andrews Distinguished Professor in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, has been recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Research Society on Alcohol (RSA). The RSA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a person who has had a long, balanced career including contributions to alcohol research, training, service, and advocacy.
The RSA lifetime achievement award recognizes a person with who has had a long, balanced career including contributions to alcohol research, training, service and advocacy. These contributions (whether they have been in research, policy, leadership or administrative) must have had a lasting impact on the alcohol research field.
Dr. Morrow has made groundbreaking discoveries pertaining to the GABAA receptor and its stimulation by neuroactive steroids and acute and chronic alcohol effects on the GABA complex as well as on neurosteroids and on allopregnenolone. She then went on to explore compounds and targets that could reverse these effects thereby having high impact broadly on treatment development for neuropsychiatric disorders such as PMDD, MDD and anxiety and now to AUD and SUD. She has also discovered a new mechanism of neuroactive steroids via neuroimmune pathways and inflammation. Her body of work has led to new therapies being tested in clinical studies and patients.
She has been an amazing leader in this area, training also a new generation of scientists to carry on this work which is likely to have far-reaching impact on the broad field of neuropsychiatry as well as in AUD. Her seminal contributions with far reaching and translational impact on basic and clinical studies and with public health implications are fitting to be recognized with the 2024 RSA Lifetime Achievement award.