Kent Vrana, PhD

Dr. Kent Vrana is the Elliot S. Vesell professor pharmacology and a member of Penn State Neuroscience Institute. He oversees the formal didactic lecture and workshop activities for the Interdisciplinary Addiction Medicine Fellowship program. An active substance abuse researcher, Vrana is a basic scientist with more than 175 coauthored manuscripts (including two textbooks). He is a College of Medicine Distinguished Educator, elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and incoming president of the national Association of Medical School Pharmacology Chairs. Vrana is editor-in-chief of pharmacology (Karger Press) and an associate editor of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. An active grant reviewer, he has served on more than 100 review panels for the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and private foundations. Vrana has chaired more than 30 panels, including serving as chair of Molecular Neuropharmacology and Signaling (MNPS, a substance abuse study section) and chair of approximately 10 reverse site visits for P50/P60 center applications for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has directed the College of Medicine’s problem-based learning curriculum for medical students for more than 10 years and has mentored over 30 pre- and postdoctoral fellows in his career.