David M. Dietz, associate professor, has been appointed chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

The announcement was made by Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School.

A faculty member since 2011, Dietz has developed a nationally and internationally recognized innovative research program focused on understanding how molecular and behavioral plasticity in the brain mediates how susceptible individuals are to drug abuse and relapse. The work is geared toward developing novel pharmacotherapeutic approaches for treating substance abuse and addiction.

Currently the principal investigator on two National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute for Drug Addictions grants to study cocaine-induced changes in the brain during addiction, Dietz and his colleagues have used an innovative “molecules-to-behavior approach” to developing a comprehensive understanding of how drugs of abuse hijack the brain’s reward circuits, creating addiction. He also is beginning to look at the neurobiology of heroin addiction.

Dietz has published in Science, Nature Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other high-impact journals, and trains postdoctoral fellows and graduate students under training grants in both his own department and UB’s Research Institute on Addictions.

A reviewer of ad hoc grants for the NIH, he also has been a reviewer for the international Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development, and for the top journals in his field.