Faculty Scholar

Tom Eissenberg, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director
Clinical Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory
Department of Psychology & Institute for Drug & Alcohol Studies
Virginia Commonwealth University
1112 E. Clay Street, Room B08
Richmond, VA 23219
Phone: 804-225-4617
Fax: 804-828-7862
Email: teissenb@vcu.edu

Thomas Eissenberg, associate professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Department of Psychology, obtained his doctorate in experimental psychology in 1994 from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the behavioral pharmacology research unit at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and joined the VCU faculty in 1997.

Dr. Eissenberg’s primary area of research is the behavioral pharmacology of drugs of abuse. The goals of this research are to understand better the phenomenon of drug dependence and to treat more effectively dependent individuals who would like to decrease or eliminate their drug use. Dependent measures include amount, frequency, and duration of drug self-administration, subjective reports of drug effects, and toxicant exposure associated with drug use. 

Current research addresses three tobacco-related themes: 1) understanding how gender and pharmacologic and associative factors influence tobacco use (funded by NIDA), 2) developing laboratory methods to evaluate potential reduced exposure products (PREPs) for tobacco users (funded by NCI), and 3) understanding the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and effects of tobacco smoking using a waterpipe in Syria and the U.S. (funded by NIH/FIC).  Throughout his career, and especially in his tobacco-related research, Dr. Eissenberg has emphasized the importance of human behavior in understanding and reducing the harm of drug use.  This emphasis is especially clear in Dr. Eissenberg’s PREP and waterpipe research, where measuring smokers’ puff topography is a key feature in understanding dependence potential and toxicant exposure. 

In addition, Dr. Eissenberg is an active promoter of the responsible conduct of research (RCR), particularly with regard to interactions between local Investigational Review Boards (IRBs) and behavioral scientists.  Dr. Eissenberg has served on VCU’s IRB since August, 2000, and on VCU’s Conflict of Interest committee since 2003.  He has delivered several lectures on RCR-related topics and written about developing collaborative relationships between IRBs and investigators.  He has served on the College on Problems of Drug Dependence’s Human Research Committee, and currently serves on the American Psychological Association’s Committee to Advance Research and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s Policy Committee.