Congratulations to Clare Hall Fellow Professor Karen Ersche on her recent appointment to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Professor Ersche will be assisting with providing advice and recommendations to the government on the harms cause by drugs.

Professor Ersche is Professor of Addiction Neuroscience at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, Head of the Addiction Research Group, and an adjunct Professor of Translational Addiction Research at the Central Institute of Mental Health (Mannheim, Germany). She favours a holistic approach in her research, combining a variety of different methodologies and interdisciplinary collaborations to assess the broad range of effects that drug abuse have on individuals’ health and wellbeing. Ultimately, her goal is to enhance progress towards recovery for those affected by drug addiction by using her research to develop more effective treatments and reduce the widespread stigma attached to the disorder. Her work has been recognised internationally by several awards, including the prestigious the Jacob P. Waletzky Memorial Award, which is presented to researchers on the basis of ground-breaking conceptual or empirical research on the drivers of drug addiction.

She is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, an elected Fellow of Clare Hall, and a Trustee of the Society for the Study of Addiction. She also the Editor-in-Chief of “European Addiction Research”.