UB Researcher Receives Prestigious National Institutes of Health MERIT Award

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo researcher Kenneth E. Leonard, Ph.D., an internationally recognized scholar in the area of addictions, has received a prestigious MERIT Award for his research from the NIH's National Advisory Council of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Leonard is a senior research scientist in UB's Research Institute on Addictions and director of the Division of Psychology within the Department of Psychiatry in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. His research focuses on marriage, parenting and infant development, as well as aggression and domestic violence.

The MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award is a selective and very high-level award that marks an investigator's work as highly significant in his field. Leonard's award is one of only five made in the last decade by the Prevention Research Branch of NIAAA.

MERIT Awards are extended to investigators who have demonstrated superior creativity, skill and outstanding productivity during the course of their research careers. They relieve investigators from writing frequent renewal applications by providing the opportunity to gain up to 10 years of uninterrupted support.

Specifically, any initial four- or five-year award is accompanied by an opportunity for an extension of from three to five more years. Investigators who are considered for the MERIT Award have a proven record of leadership on NIH-funded projects. Awardees also must have a distinguished record of scientific achievement and have worked in research that is at the cutting edge of the investigator's field.

Leonard's work is known internationally in the field of addictions. A member of Division 50 (Addictions) of the American Psychological Association (APA) since 1993, he served as president for the year 2000-2001. He also is a member of the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Leonard has been at the RIA since 1986 researching marital/family processes, parenting and infant development, interpersonal aggression, bar violence and domestic violence. He

currently is the principal investigator on three projects funded by the NIAAA.

Those projects include the Alcohol and Bar Violence Project, which focuses on the prevalence of alcohol-related bar violence among young adults between 18 and 30 years of age. In Parenting and Child Development in Alcoholic Families, Leonard and his colleagues are evaluating the influence of the father's alcohol use on the family and on the social and emotional development of infants. His third study, the Alcohol and Early Marriage Project, is studying peer and spouse influence in drinking and alcohol-related problems of young couples from marriage through their fourth anniversary.

Leonard earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at Kent State University in Ohio. In 1992, he received the Director's Recognition Award from the New York State Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse and in 1996 was named a fellow in the Division of Addictions by the American Psychological Association. He has co-authored three books, numerous book chapters and journal articles, and serves on several editorial boards and review committees.

He is a resident of Amherst.