Bickel Winner of Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award

By Liz Caldwell

Bickel, a professor in the UAMS Department of Psychiatry and the holder of the Wilbur D. Mills Chair of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Prevention, was chosen for the honor by a committee of 12 College of Medicine faculty members appointed by Dean Debra H. Fiser, M.D.

Named Researcher of the Year by the Arkansas Psychological Association (ArPA) in 2006, Bickel received his fourth concurrent grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) last year. About 2 percent of NIH’s grant recipients ever receive four or more concurrent awards. This grant provides Bickel and his team $2.7 million over a five-year period with the goal to determine whether the effects of addiction on the decision-making process can be reversed or rehabilitated.

Past winners of the Faculty Lectureship Award include Bart Barlogie, M.D., Ph.D., director of UAMS’ Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, Gazi Yasargil, M.D., of the Department of Neurosurgery and James Suen, M.D., chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology.

“I’m very honored by this, being something of a newcomer here,” Bickel said. “It feels very special to be a member of a distinguished group.”

Bickel, who joined the UAMS faculty in 2004, is a former professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Vermont in Burlington where he was director of the Chittenden Center, an addictions treatment program.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a new 540,000-square-foot hospital, six centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has 2,775 students and 748 medical residents. Its centers of excellence include the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including nearly 1,150 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.

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