News & Events

News & Events

News, outreach & teaching

• September 2026 Award

  PARC Pilot Awards 2026: applications due October 15

  The PARC Pilot Projects Core is accepting applications for its 2026 pilot awards. Awards of $5,000 to $25,000 per year fund innovative, biologically based studies of addiction that generate preliminary data for future NIH applications, build new collaborations, and lead to publishable findings. Projects are completed within 12 months and can be renewed for a second year based on progress. Any qualified investigator at a US-based academic institution may apply, including faculty, postdoctoral fellows, staff scientists, and research scientists, with priority for junior investigators.

  Proposals that use the center’s resources are strongly encouraged: samples from the alcohol, cocaine, oxycodone, and heroin Addiction Biobank, behaviorally characterized heterogeneous stock rats, the center’s genotype–phenotype data, and sample testing paid directly by PARC. Applications are due October 15, 2026, at 5:00 pm Pacific. See the full call and apply.

• September 2026 Award

  UC San Diego announces $12.6 million NIDA award to launch PARC

  UC San Diego Today has announced the five-year, $12.6 million award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that establishes the Polysubstance Addiction Research Center. The center brings together researchers from psychiatry, medicine, obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, computational biology, and the VA San Diego Healthcare System to study cocaine, oxycodone, alcohol, and cocaine plus oxycodone within one coordinated research strategy.

  Addiction research has long been split between alcohol and drug research, “but that division doesn’t reflect how addiction occurs in the real world,” said center director Olivier George. PARC will study behavior alongside brain networks, gene activity, immune and metabolic processes, and the gut–brain connection in the same individuals, compare the results with human datasets, and test whether the biological targets it finds actually change addiction-related behavior. The center will also expand the Addiction Biobank and share its data and tools through NIH repositories. Read the full story on UC San Diego Today.

• September 2026 Seminar

  Journal club resumes: next-generation weight-loss drugs and the brain's reward circuitry , iBRF balcony, 4:00 pm

  The monthly Neural Circuitry of Reward & Addiction journal club resumes Thursday, September 10 at 4:00 pm on the iBRF balcony. This month’s paper: “A brain reward circuit inhibited by next-generation weight-loss drugs in mice” by Godschall et al. (2026), Nature.

• September 2020 Teaching

  PSYC188: Impulse Control Disorders (Fall 2020) , UCSD

• September 2020 Teaching

  PGY3: Neurobiology of Habits , UCSD Psychiatry Residency Program

• July 2020 Teaching

  PSYC188: Impulse Control Disorders (Summer 2020) , UCSD

• June 2020 Teaching

  PSYC179: Drug Addiction and Mental Disorders (Summer 2020) , UCSD

• March 2020 Teaching

  PSYC179: Drug Addiction and Mental Disorders (Spring 2020) , UCSD

• February 2020 Outreach

  Illumination: 21st Century Interactions with Art + Science + Technology , San Diego Art Institute

• January 2019 Teaching

  BIOM255: Drug Addiction and Abuse , UCSD Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program

• April 2018 Outreach

  Suds & Science: The Neuroscience of Addiction , Fleet Science Center

• January 2018 Teaching

  Evolution of the Concept of Addiction , UCSD/SDSU Preventive Medicine

• September 2016 Teaching

  Neuro550: Neurobiology of Addiction (2016–2018) , Scripps Graduate School

• January 2016 Outreach

  Netflix Special: Chelsea Does Drugs , Netflix