Faculty Scholars

Eric C. Donny, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of Pittsburgh
SENSQ 4119 Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Phone: 412-624-4500
Email: edonny@pitt.edu

Eric Donny is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.  He graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from U.C. Davis in 1993 and received his Ph.D. in Health Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999 after conducting a series of studies on nicotine self-administration in rats.  Dr. Donny then moved to Johns Hopkins where he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Human Behavioral Pharmacology. In 2001, he joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins and continued to conducted research on the factors impacting the reinforcing effects of cigarette smoke, heroin and cocaine in human volunteers.  In 2005, Dr. Donny moved back to the University of Pittsburgh and began conducting both animal and human research on nicotine and tobacco use and dependence.  He currently has two converging areas of interest.  The first area focuses on understanding the individual and combined reinforcing effects of nicotine and nicotine-associated stimuli (e.g., the taste, smell, and feel of a cigarette) The second area focuses on characterizing individual differences in vulnerability to the development of regular nicotine self-administration and nicotine dependence. Dr. Donny has received NIH support for his research and was a faculty scholar in the transdisciplinary Tobacco Etiology Research Network funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.