Helen Valerie Curran#
| Membership Number: | 6961 |
| Membership type: | ORDINARY |
| Section: | CLINICAL & VETERINARY SCIENCE |
| Elected: | 2024 |
| Main Country of Residence: | UNITED KINGDOM |
| Homepage(s): | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychopharmacology/ |
| ORCID: | 0000-0001-6011-6978 |
Present and Previous Positions
- 2022 Emeritus Professor
- 2000 - 2022 Professor of Psychopharmacology, University College London
- 2017 - present Professorial Fellow, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia (0.2 FTE)
- 2000 - 2022 Research Lead, Drug Services, Camden and Islington Mental Health NHS Trust
- 1999 - 2022 Founder & Director, UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit.
- 1995 - 2022 Hon. Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust
- 1995 – 2000 Reader in Psychopharmacology, UCL
- 1990 - 1994 Senior lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), Kings College London (KCL)
- 1990 - 1994 Honorary Clinical Psychologist, Maudsley Hospital, London
- 1986 – 1990 Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry, IoPPN, KCL
- 1983 – 1986 Research Fellow, IoPPN, KCL
Fields of Scholarship
- Psychedelics, cannabinoids and ketamine
- Short and long-term consequences of ketamine use
- Cognitive effects of benzodiazepines
- Cannabinoids, adolescence and addiction
- Drugs and memory
- Effects of Cannabis and cannabinoids on humans
Honours and Awards
- 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, British Association of Psychopharmacology
- 2013 Memory and the Law Working Party, British Psychological Society
- 2011 Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Biology
- 2010 - 2018 Scientific Advisor, The Beckley Foundation
- 2012 - present Faculty Member, F1000
- 2009 Founder member: DRUG SCIENCE – the only independent, science-led drugs charity. It brings together leading drugs experts from a wide range of specialisms to carry out ground breaking research into drug harms and effects. She has sat on the Expert Scientific Committee since 2009
- 2012 - 2019 Scientific Advisor, All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform2011 - 2015 Awards for documentaries about her research (Drugs Live: Ecstasy 2011; Drugs Live: Cannabis 2015) by Channel 4 television (the cannabis one won 1st prize as Best Specialist Programme of the Year from the Association of International Broadcasters
- March 2014 1st prize, UCL Brains on Film Competition. An educational animated cartoon we made about cannabinoids which was set to hip hop music composed by 11-16 year old school children. Sent free to science departments in UK schools
- 2009 - 2014 Elected Member of Council, British Association of Psychopharmacology
- 2006 Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
- 2001 Elected to the Memory Disorders Research Society (MDRS); an international society of the world’s leading memory researchers
- 1993 Winston Churchill Fellowship
- 1979 Susan Isaacs Research Fellowship
