Symposium on Addictive & Health Behaviors Research
Sep. 24-25, 2007
Amelia Island Plantation
Speaker Biographies
Gilbert J. Botvin, PhD
Dr. Gilbert J. Botvin is an internationally known expert on tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse prevention. He received a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in 1977 and has been a member of Cornell University’s medical school faculty for 28 years. Currently, Dr. Botvin is a Professor of Public Health and a Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell’s Weill Medical College. He is also Director of Cornell’s Institute for Prevention Research and Chief of the Department of Public Health’s Division of Prevention and Health Behavior.
Dr. Botvin has published over 200 scientific papers and book chapters, and has given numerous invited addresses at major national and international conferences. He is the founding editor of Prevention Science, the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research, served as the President of the Society for Prevention Research from 2001 to 2003, and has served on numerous expert panels for federal agencies such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, the US Department of Education, the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, and the World Health Organization.
Thomas H. Brandon, PhD 
Thomas H. Brandon, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Oncology at the University of South Florida, and Director of the Tobacco Research & Intervention Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He held assistant and associate professor positions at the State University of New York for seven years before moving to the University of South Florida in 1997. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s Divisions on Addiction; Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse; and Clinical Psychology. Dr. Brandon has been working in the area of tobacco dependence for over 24 years. He conducts basic human behavioral research on factors that influence the maintenance and cessation of smoking (e.g., mood management, conditioned responding, outcome expectancies) as well as applied research in which those factors are targeted in smoking cessation interventions. Lately he has also been developing cost-effective minimal interventions designed to reduce the rate of smoking relapse. From 2000 to 2004, Dr. Brandon served as Editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, published by the American Psychological Association. Research in his laboratory has been funded through grants awarded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, as well as by several foundations including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation.
Kelly D. Brownell, PhD 
Kelly Brownell is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, where he also serves as Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health and as Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. He has served in a number of leadership roles at Yale including Master of Silliman College and Chair of the Department of Psychology from 2003-2006. In 2006 Time magazine listed Kelly Brownell among "The World’s 100 Most Influential People" in its special Time 100 issue featuring those ".. whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world."
Dr. Brownell was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine in 2006 and served as President of several national organizations, including the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, and the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the James McKeen Cattell Award from the New York Academy of Sciences, the award for Outstanding contribution to Health Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Purdue University.
He has published 14 books and more than 300 scientific articles and chapters. One book received the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book from the American Library Association, and his paper on "Understanding and Preventing Relapse" published in the American Psychologist was listed as one of the most frequently cited papers in psychology.
Dr. Brownell has advised members of congress, governors, world health and nutrition organizations, and media leaders on issues of nutrition, obesity, and public policy. He was cited as a "moral entrepreneur" with special influence on public discourse in a history of the obesity field and was cited by Time magazine as a leading "warrior" in the area of nutrition and public policy.
K. Michael Cummings, PhD, MPH 
Dr. K. Michael Cummings joined the staff of Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) in 1981, and was appointed Chair of the Department of Health Behavior, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences in 1999. He earned a master’s degree in Public Health (1977) and a doctorate (1980) in Health Behavior at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Dr. Cummings also holds the rank of Senior Research Scientist at Roswell Park and Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at University at Buffalo where he has taught courses in cancer epidemiology, health behavior, and tobacco control. He has authored over 200 scientific papers on topics related to tobacco control and contributed to several US Surgeon General’s Reports on Smoking and Health. Dr. Cummings is the Director of the New York State Smoker’s Quitline and principal investigator of the Roswell Park NCI-supported transdisciplinary tobacco use research center which is investigating the impact of national level tobacco control policies across different countries. Dr. Cummings has also spearheaded efforts to provide public access to the previously secret tobacco industry documents that were released as part of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. He and his colleagues at Roswell Park were responsible for digitizing and over 18 million pages of internal documents and videotapes from the Tobacco Institute and Council for Tobacco Research. His research spans a wide range of topics most of which focuses upon understanding why people use tobacco and how to assist those who wish to quit using tobacco to do so. He has published papers on the influence of tobacco product marketing and counter-marketing campaigns, product design, consumer risk perceptions, treatments for smoking cessation, and the influence of public policy on tobacco use behaviors. He is widely acknowledged as one of the leading public health experts in the field of tobacco control and has testified as an expert witness in over a dozen court cases against the tobacco industry.
Dr. Cummings is a member of many professional organizations, including the American Association of Cancer Research, American Society of Preventive Oncology, American Public Health Association, and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.
Meg Gerrard, PhD 
Meg Gerrard received her Ph.D. in community psychology from the University of Texas with a focus on risky sexual behavior. After an appointment as a human services consultant at the University of Texas School of Social Work, she began her academic career teaching in the University of Kansas Clinical Psychology Program. She moved to her current position as a professor in the Social Psychology Program and Co-director of the Health and Behavior Research Project at Iowa State University in 1985. In addition to risky and unprotected sexual behavior, she studies drug use, alcohol use and abuse, smoking, UV exposure, and risk perceptions related to risk and protective behaviors. Her research has been funded by a variety of federal agencies including NSF, NIAAA, and NCI.
Frederick X. Gibbons, PhD 
Rick Gibbons is Professor of Psychology and Co-director of the Health and Behavior Research Project in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University.
He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Texas in 1976, and then did post-doctoral work at the University of Kansas in applied social psychology.
His primary research interests focus on health applications of social psychology theory. In particular, he studies psychosocial factors that influence health promoting and
health impairing behaviors, the latter including substance use and risky or "casual" sexual behavior. His research involves lab / experimental and field / survey techniques as well as theory-based health interventions; it has been supported by a number of different funding agencies.
Michael G. Perri, PhD, ABPP
Michael G. Perri, PhD, ABPP, is Professor of Clinical and Health Psychology and Associate Dean for Research of the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions. The major focus of Dr. Perri’s research is the development of lifestyle interventions for health promotion via changes in diet and physical activity. His work in this area has been funded since 1980 by grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health, including NHLBI and NIDDK, as well as the Veterans Administration Merit Review Research Program and private industry. Dr. Perri is currently the PI for the NHLBI-funded TOURS study ("Treatment of Obesity in Underserved Rural Setting"), which is focused on the long-term management of obesity in women from rural communities. He is also Co-PI for the NIDDK-supported STORY trial ("Sensible Treatment of Obesity in Rural Youth"), which is evaluating family-based behavioral treatments for childhood obesity. Dr. Perri has contributed to more than 100 publications, including peer-reviewed articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Archives of Internal Medicine, Diabetes Care, Health Psychology, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and Behavior Therapy. His program of empirical studies testing behavioral methods to improve the long-term management of obesity has contributed significantly to what has become the standard of care in lifestyle interventions for weight management.
Judith Prochaska, PHD, MPH 
Judith Prochaska, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a member of the Tobacco Control Program in the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. A licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Prochaska obtained her B.A. at Duke University, a master’s degree in public health at San Diego State University (SDSU), and a doctorate in clinical psychology at the UC-San Diego / SDSU Joint Doctoral Program. She completed her internship and postdoctoral training at UCSF with a postdoctoral fellowship from the State of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) to examine treatment of multiple risk behaviors among smokers. Dr. Prochaska’s research focuses on developing effective treatments for tobacco dependence and other leading health risk factors with a specific focus on populations with co-occurring disorders. Funded with a TRDRP New Investigator Award, Dr. Prochaska developed an evidence-based tobacco treatment curriculum for psychiatry residency training programs. Dr. Prochaska has a K23 career development award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and, in a randomized controlled trial, is testing an expert system intervention combined with nicotine replacement therapy for treating tobacco dependence in inpatient psychiatry. Dr. Prochaska has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and in 2007 was named the recipient of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) Jarvik-Russell Young Investigator Award. She is a member of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and co-chairs the Special Interest Group on Multiple Risk Behavior Change. At UCSF, Dr. Prochaska oversees tobacco treatment training in the School of Medicine, serves as the primary mentor for postdoctoral fellows in two NIH-funded multidisciplinary postdoctoral training programs, and coordinates a clinical seminar series for pre- and post-doctoral fellows in the UCSF Clinical Psychology Training Program.
Linda Carter Sobell, PhD
Dr. Linda Carter Sobell is Professor at the Center for Psychological Studies, Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Prior to this, for 17 years she was a senior scientist at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto and a Professor at the University of Toronto. She is internationally known for her clinical research in the addictions field, particularly brief motivational interventions. She has received several awards, given over 200 invited presentations/workshops and published over 250 articles and book chapters, and 6 books, and serves on several editorial boards. She is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, is a Motivational Interviewing Trainer (MINT), and holds a Diplomate in Behavioral Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. She is past President of both the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy and the Society of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association.
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