SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR

Robert H. Dworkin received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD from Harvard University. He is currently Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY; Adjunct Senior Scientist in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care & Pain Management at the Hospital for Special Surgery Research Institute, New York, NY; and Director of Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION).

Dr. Dworkin is an Associate Editor of Pain, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Canadian Journal of Pain and Journal of Pain. He has served as a Special Government Employee of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and as a member of the FDA Anesthetic and Life Support Drugs Advisory Committee and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Herpes Zoster Working Group. Dr. Dworkin received the American Pain Society’s Wilbert E. Fordyce Clinical Investigator Award in 2005 and John and Emma Bonica Public Service Award in 2014, the Eastern Pain Association’s John J. Bonica Award in 2011 and Raymond Houde Lectureship Award in 2018, the American Academy of Neurology’s Mitchell B. Max Award for Neuropathic Pain in 2015, the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s Founders Award in 2018, and the International Association for the Study of Pain’s John D. Loeser Prize for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in the Clinical Science of Pain in 2020. He has over 400 publications.

Dr. Dworkin’s major research interests are (1) methodologic aspects of analgesic clinical trials and (2) treatment and prevention of chronic and acute neuropathic and musculoskeletal pain. The primary focus of his current research involves the identification of factors that increase the assay sensitivity of randomized clinical trials to detect differences between an efficacious treatment and a placebo control or comparison intervention. Another major focus of his current research activities has been designing and conducting randomized clinical trials of psychedelics, especially psilocybin and LSD. These psychedelics have shown promise in the treatment of various psychiatric disorders and chronic pain conditions.  

Dr. Dworkin has served as a consultant numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development and evaluation of analgesic treatments, and he has been the principal investigator for a large number of clinical trials funded by government and industry. These studies have examined treatments for various types of chronic pain - including painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy and other chronic neuropathic pain conditions, musculoskeletal low back pain, osteoarthritis joint pain, and fibromyalgia- as well as treatments for acute post-surgical pain and for acute pain in herpes zoster.