Annual Awards

The Research Society on Alcohol presents the following annual awards.

Information and previous recipients of each are below.

Requests for nominations, including criteria, are posted in October along with annual meeting materials.
Each year, the deadline for nominations is January 31, 6:00PM CST.

Honor your deserving colleagues with an RSA AWARD – being RECOGNIZED
by your peers is the best form of thanks! Don’t let a little paperwork stop you –
if nominee is not awarded, qualified nominations are carried over for 2 subsequent
years (total of 3 years' consideration).

*RSA Members only may nominate.

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Annual Awards

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RSA Lifetime Achievement Award

This award recognizes a person with who has had a long, balanced career including contributions to alcohol research, training, service and advocacy. These contributions (whether they have been in research, policy, leadership or administrative) must have had a lasting impact on the alcohol research field.

Nominations for this award are accepted from RSA members only. Non-members nominated will be considered but are not encouraged. All scientists except the immediate-past president and the current president, secretary and treasurer of the RSA are eligible. Past RSA Distinguished Researcher Awardees are eligible once 5 years have passed since receipt of the award.

Recipients of this award receive a plaque and cash award at the annual meeting.

Previous recipients of this award are:

Thomas Turner (1996)
Harold Holder (2005)
Enoch Gordis (2006)
Steven W. Leslie (2007)
Robert Voas (2008)
Victor Hesselbrock (2010)
Arthur Cederbaum (2011)
Floyd Bloom (2012)
Ting-Kai Li (2013)
Kenneth Warren (2014)
Emanuel Rubin / Boris Tabakoff (2015)
Raul Caetano (2016)
Samuel French (2017)
Linda Spear (2018)
Constance Weisner (2019)
Harriet de Wit (2020)
Raye Litten (2021)
Adolf Pfefferbaum (2022)
Edward Riley (2023)
A. Leslie Morrow (2024)

RSA Distinguished Researcher Award

This award recognizes a senior researcher who has made outstanding scientific contributions to the alcohol field. The recipient will have demonstrated a sustained long-term commitment to conducting alcohol research and have a substantial record of publication in the field.

All scientists except the immediate-past president and the current president, secretary and treasurer of the Research Society on Alcohol are eligible.

Nominations will be accepted from RSA members only. Non-members nominated will be considered but are not encouraged. The award will alternate between psychosocial: sociological and clinical research (even years) and biomedical: basic and biological human research (odd years) awardees.

Recipients of this award receive a plaque and cash award at the annual meeting and present a plenary during meeting of the year awarded.

Previous recipients of this award are:

Charles S. Lieber (1980)
Dora Goldstein (1981)
Ting-Kai Li (1982)
Harold Kalant (1983)
Richard A. Deitrich (1984)
David H. Van Thiel (1985)
Marcus A. Rothschild (1986)
Steven Schenker (1987)
Boris Tabakoff (1988)
Jack Mendelson / Nancy K. Mello (1989)
Yedy Israel (1990)
Lawrence Lumeng (1991)
Henri Begleiter (1992)
Marc A. Schuckit (1993)
Ivan Diamond (1994)
Nelson Butters (1995)
John Crabbe (1996)
Oscar Parsons (1997)
Carrie Randall (1998)
R. Adron Harris (1999)
Herman H. Samson (2000)
James West / V. Gene Erwin (2001)
George Koob (2002)

Andrew Heath (2003)
G. Alan Marlatt (2004)
Edward Riley (2005)
Peter Monti (2006)
Fulton T. Crews (2007)
Kenneth Sher (2008)
Howard Edenberg (2009)
Robert Zucker (2010)
Adolf Pfefferbaum / Edith V. Sullivan (2011)
Richard Saitz (2012)
Paula Hoffman (2013)
Cindy Ehlers (2014)
David Goldman (2015)
Richard Longabaugh (2016)
Dipak Sarkar (2017)
Stephanie O'Malley (2018)
Tatiana Foroud (2019)
Rajita Sinha (2020)
Robert Messing (2021)
Paul Gruenewald (2022)
Subhash Pandey (2023)
Bernice Porjesz (2024)

RSA Early Career Investigator Award

This award recognizes an early career investigator (formerly young investigator) who has demonstrated research excellence, potential to be a future leader and a commitment to the alcohol field.

Nominees may be no more than 10 years beyond:

Starting after the PhD is awarded (at the beginning of postdoctoral training).
Starting after conclusion of Residency training for MDs (i.e., at the beginning of the first postdoctoral fellowship).

Nominations for this award are accepted from RSA members only. Nominees must be active in alcohol research and be an RSA member. The award will alternate between psychosocial: sociological and clinical research (odd years) and biomedical: basic and biological human research (even years) awardees.

Recipients of this award receive a plaque and cash award at the annual meeting and present a plenary during the following year’s meeting.