Craig Rush, PhD

Dr. Craig Rush completed his doctoral education at the University of Vermont (1992) and post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, 1992-1994). Dr. Rush joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1994 and established a successful and federally funded human behavioral pharmacology laboratory. His research focused largely on the behavioral effects of commonly abused drugs. Dr. Rush moved his laboratory to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in 1999 and has continued to enjoy generous federal funding for his research. He expanded his research and it now focuses largely on medications development for stimulant-use disorders. He has determined the initial efficacy of putative pharmacotherapies from diverse pharmacological classes including: agonist replacement therapy, dopamine antagonists, GABAA receptor modulators, and novel medication combinations. As a principal investigator or co-investigator on several previous University- and NIH-funded grants, Dr. Rush laid the groundwork at the University of Kentucky for conducting human laboratory experiments and clinical trials designed to determine the efficacy of medications for stimulant-use disorders. Dr. Rush has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. Dr. Rush currently directs an institutional training grant (T32) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse as well the TL1 component of the CCTS grant awarded to the University of Kentucky.