Biography

Michael T. Lynskey. Ph.D. is a Professor of Addictions in the National Addictions Centre with a focus on adolescence and young adulthood. He completed his training in New Zealand, working on the Christchurch Health and Development, a longitudinal study of 1265 children, and has held academic appointments at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales and in the Dept. of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri. Michael has published extensively in the field of longitudinal studies and developmental psychopathology, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to cannabis use and cannabis use disorders, including the epidemiology and etiology of cannabis use and dependence; the assessment of cannabis use disorders, the comorbidity between cannabis use and mental health, and the genetics of cannabis dependence. He has been the principal investigator on two recent NIDA funded R01 grants: a twin study of substance use and related phenotypes among a sample of young adult Australian twins and an extended family study of substance use among Missouri born twins and their full siblings. Additionally, he was Principal Investigator on Project 5 of the NIAAA funded Mid-Western Alcoholism Research Center which added a genetic research component to several existing longitudinal studies of alcohol and other drug use in adolescence and youth.