Oct. 16, 2009 | Oct. 16, 2009 | Warren K. Bickel, Ph.D., whose research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) focuses on the complex decision-making process of human beings, has received the 2008-2009 Dean’s Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award.

As part of the award, given annually to a faculty member of the UAMS College of Medicine, Bickel presented a lecture Oct. 7 titled “Tyranny of Small Decisions: Biology, Culture, and the Fate of Our Society.”

Bickel is director of the Center for Addiction Research at the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute. He is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the holder of the Wilbur D. Mills Chair of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Prevention,

Bickel was chosen by a committee of 12 College of Medicine faculty members appointed by Dean Debra H. Fiser, M.D.

Past winners of the Faculty Lectureship Award include Bart Barlogie, M.D., Ph.D., director of UAMS’ Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, Gazi Yasargil, M.D., of the Department of Neurosurgery and James Suen, M.D., chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology.

“I’m very honored by this, being something of a newcomer here,” Bickel said. “It feels very special to be a member of a distinguished group.”

Named Researcher of the Year by the Arkansas Psychological Association (ArPA) in 2006, Bickel received his fourth concurrent grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) last year. About 2 percent of NIH’s grant recipients ever receive four or more concurrent awards.

This grant provides Bickel and his team $2.7 million over a five-year period with the goal to determine whether the effects of addiction on the decision-making process can be reversed or rehabilitated.

Bickel, who joined the UAMS faculty in 2004, is a former professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Vermont in Burlington where he was director of the Chittenden Center, an addictions treatment program.