Research Interest:

Dr. Russell Poland is the Vice President for Research and a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Meharry Medical College. Previously, he served as the President of Texas Health Research and Education Institute and Senior Vice President of Texas Health Resources, the largest non-profit hospital system in north Texas. Immediately prior to his position in Texas, he was Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A, and Director of Psychiatry Research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. At Cedars-Sinai he also was Director of Biobehavioral Research in the Burns and Allen Research Institute, Chair of the Research Conflicts of Interest Committee and Executive Chair of the Institutional Review Boards. At Meharry, Dr. Poland is responsible for guiding the College’s research enterprise. He has extensive basic, clinical and translational biomedical science research experience. As mentioned, he has a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and an A.B. in bacteriology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Poland has served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, Veterans Administration and other agencies. He has had a significant amount of funding as both an NIH R01 and MERIT Award recipient and has over 225 scholarly publications. He has received research funding as a Principal Investigator from the NIH/National Institute of Mental Health, NIH/National Institute of Drug Abuse, NIH/National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, State of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, March of Dimes, Smokeless Tobacco Foundation, Glaxo Smith Kline, Pfizer and The Upjohn Company. He also has trained a mentored numerous students and faculty, both junior and senior.