Dr Lakshmi Devi - 2016

"Opioid receptor regulation and dimers"

Dr Lakshmi Devi
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, NY USA

Dr Lakshmi Devi is a Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. She is also the Dean for Academic Development and Enrichment and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Training in Drug Abuse Research Program

at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. As a researcher she has made an impressive contribution to the field of opioids.
She has been widely recognized for her research exploring the novel pharmacology of receptor dimerization with a particular focus on receptor heterodimers. An important part of her research is directed to investigation of fundamental mechanisms underlying opioid and cannabinoid receptor activation by combining molecular biological, biochemical, cell-biological, pharmacological and behavioral techniques.

Dr Devi received her PhD at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada and her postdoctoral training with Avram Goldstein at the Addiction Research Foundation, Palo Alto, California and
at the Vollum Institute, Portland, Oregon with Ed Herbert.

She continued her research career as Assistant and Associate Professor at the faculty of Pharmacology at the New York University before joining Mount Sinai School of Medicine as a Professor of Pharmacology and Biological Sciences. Dr Devi has authored around 200 scientific research articles and reviews, most of them published in high ranked international journals including PNAS, Nature and Science. She has mentored more than 70 trainees including medical students, graduate students, postdoctoral research associates, and visiting scientists.

The scientific achievements of Dr Lakshmi Devi have been recognized by many grants, patents and several honors and awards. The latter include the National Institute of Drug Abuse Senior Scientist and Mentorship Award, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Basic Research, and the NIH MERIT award. She has also been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr Devi is widely praised for her role in organizing symposia in national and international conferences. Since her first meeting in Garmisch Partenkirchen in 1983, she has been a frequent attendant at the INRC meetings and together with her students and collaborators provided outstanding contributions to our organization. She served as a member of the executive committee of INRC (1996-1998) and as the President

of the INRC (2006-2010). It is fair to say that Dr Lakshmi Devi belongs to the core of successful researchers that has been essential for the development and maintenance of INRC as an organization promoting high-quality science in the opioid field.