Kent E. Vrana

Penn State College of Medicine (PA, USA)

Dr Vrana, PhD, FAAAS has served as Elliot S. Vesell Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the Penn State College of Medicine and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center since 2004. He received his BSc with honors in Biochemistry from the University of Iowa, and his PhD in Biochemistry (Pharmacology minor) from Louisiana State University Medical Center. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (on the Johns Hopkins University campus). He joined Penn State following faculty positions at West Virginia University and Wake Forest University.

Dr Vrana is a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals and has served as chair and/or a member of over 110 scientific review panel meetings for the federal government. He has co-authored more than 170 scientific articles, book chapters, and monographs (including two textbooks). His research is focused on molecular neurobiology of substance abuse, neurotransmitter biosynthesis, stem cells and neurodegenerative disease. In 2009, he was named an honorary professor of the School of Medicine of the Peruvian University of Applied Science in Lima, Peru, and was inducted into the Society of Distinguished Educators at the Penn State College of Medicine. In 2017, he received the Outstanding Research Mentor Award from the College of Medicine. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).