David Nichols, PhD is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy and was the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology, where he taught and researched for 38 years.

He is also the Director of Molecular Pharmacology at Eleusis Therapeutics. In 2004 he was named the Irvine H. Page Lecturer by the International Society for Serotonin Research, received the first Purdue Provost’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor award in 2006, and was named a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy in 2012. He began studying psychedelics as a graduate student in 1969. His lab synthesised DMT for Dr. Rick Strassman, MDMA for MAPS Phase I and II clinical trials, and psilocybin used for human clinical studies conducted at Johns Hopkins University. In 1993 he founded the Heffter Research Institute (HRI), which funded the first groundbreaking Phase I and II studies of psilocybin for the treatment of depression, and pilot studies for treating alcohol use disorder, and tobacco addiction.