Biography:

      Mark Smith added Behavioral Pharmacology to the research program at Davidson College in 1998. He received his B.A. from Lenoir-Rhyne College and completed his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches classes in General Psychology, Learning, Drugs and Behavior, Behavioral Pharmacology and Clinical Psychopharmacology.
      Dr. Smith’s primary line of research focuses on the biochemical and behavioral effects of opioids, a class of drugs that is used extensively for both clinical and recreational purposes.  A major focus of this research involves identifying the variables contributing to differences in opioid sensitivity across subject populations.  Dr. Smith’s research has shown that these variables fall along a number of dimensions that include characteristics of the user (i.e., biological), characteristics of the drug (i.e., pharmacological) and characteristics of the setting and situation in which the drug is administered (i.e., environmental).  Dr. Smith’s research examines how these variables interact with one another to influence how an individual will respond to an opioid in a particular situation.  In his laboratory, Dr. Smith and his students use a number of animal models to examine the effects of these drugs across a variety of experimental conditions and subject populations.
      Dr. Smith is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Neuroscience, the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence, and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He has 21 journal publications and 25 presentations at national and international conferences.