Laura Jean Bierut, MD

Laura Jean Bierut, MD

Alumni Endowed Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine

Dr. Bierut is a physician scientist with significant experience in genetic studies of smoking behaviors, addiction, and other psychiatric and medical illnesses. She is an active member in the Genetics Consortium at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a national group of scientists who are leading efforts to understand genetic causes of substance dependence.

Dr. Bierut also has considerable experience in the management of large, collaborative projects. She has led The Collaborative Genetic Study of Nicotine Dependence (COGEND) since 2006. She is a national co-PI of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA), which involves long-term follow-up assessments and is currently in year 23. As part of COGEND and COGA, thousands of research subjects have been successfully recruited and interviewed and have submitted blood samples for genetic analysis.