mark gold, md

Chairman, Rivermend Health’s Scientific Advisory Boards

Mark S. Gold, M.D. is a world renowned expert on addiction-related diseases and has worked for over 40 years to develop models for understanding the effects of tobacco, cocaine, and other drugs, as well as food, on the brain and behavior. Mark S. Gold, M.D. is the Chairman of Rivermend Health’s Scientific Advisory Boards. H s best known for his work defining the brain systems involved in opioid withdrawal, development of novel medication assisted therapies, and studying the importance of dopamine in reinforcement and withdrawal. He served as Professor, the Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry from 1990-2014. Dr. Gold was the first Faculty from the College of Medicine to be selected as a University-wide Distinguished Alumni Professor and served as the 17th University of Florida’s Distinguished Alumni Professor. Prior to assuming the position as Chair, he was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Anesthesiology, and Community Health and Family Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He is also a Founding member of the McKnight Brain Institute and a Founder of the U.F. Center for Alcohol and Drug Research and Education (CARE), and Adjunct, professor Washington University in St Louis College of Medicine. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (DFASAM), and was awarded the John McGovern Award from ASAM for his pioneering research in 2015. Gold and Kelly Brownell organzied the seminal Food and Addiction Conference at Yale in 2007, and Co-Edited the groundbreaking Oxford University text bringing together the work in this area in one place for the first time.