Sarah Snider, PhD
Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Snider has conducted extensive work in the area of substance abuse, behavioral economics, and decision-making. Dr. Snider received her BS in Neuroscience and Psychology from Allegheny College and her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed her Post Doctoral research under the mentorship of Dr. Warren Bickel at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute in Roanoke VA, where she currently holds a Senior Research Associate appointment. In addition, Dr. Snider is currently leading BEAM Diagnostics through their tenure as one of the cohort companies in the Roanoke and Blacksburg Regional Accelerator and Mentorship Program (RAMP) and executing NIH funded STTR grant projects.

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Warren Bickel, PhD
Senior Scientific Advisor

Dr. Bickel is an accomplished scholar and researcher in addiction and health behavior research. He received his Ph.D. in developmental and child psychology from the University of Kansas and completed post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has led research programs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of Vermont, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He currently leads NIH-funded research programs at the Fralin Biomedical Research Insitute at Virginia Tech Carilion. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the 2016 Nathan B. Eddy Award for outstanding research. Dr. Bickel has co-edited five books and published over 350 papers and chapters. His work is frequently cited and receives national and international recognition.

James MacKillop, PhD
Senior Scientific Advisor

Dr. MacKillop trained as a clinical psychologist at the State University of New York at Binghamton (BA, MA, PhD) and Brown University (predoctoral internship). Dr. MacKillop is the inaugural holder of the Peter Boris Chair in Addictions Research, Director of the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research, and Co-Director of the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research. Dr. MacKillop’s research has generated over 200 peer-reviewed publications and other works to date, and has been recognized by awards from the Society for Addiction Psychology, the Research Society on Alcoholism, and the American Psychological Association. His research program has been funded by extramural grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and other extramural funders since 2005. In addition to his own research, he is active in peer review, serving in editorial roles for the journals Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, and Addiction. He is also a member of the College of Reviewers for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.