Professor Edythe London,  the Thomas P. and Katherine K. Pike Chair of Addiction Studies at UCLA and an internationally recognized expert in the subject of drug addiction, provided scientific testimony Sept. 18 in Washington, D.C., to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Research and Technology on the subject of methamphetamine addiction. She discussed the importance of basic research on drug addiction as well as the promising treatments that have been developed as a result. Methamphetamine addiction costs in the United States have been estimated at $23.4 billion, and the problem has been associated with crime, premature mortality, lost productivity, and medical conditions.
 
London is a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology. Director of the UCLA Laboratory of Molecular Neuroimaging, she pioneered the application of brain imaging to the study of substance abuse. Her research uses a translational approach to develop a better understanding of addictive disorders and further the rational design of therapeutics. Her laboratory was the first to show a relationship between drug craving and activity in brain regions that underlie episodic memory and link memory with emotion. Her research also has contributed to the development of new approaches and probes for noninvasive brain imaging. Her laboratory now focuses on stimulant and nicotine addiction. 
 
Before joining the UCLA faculty in 2001, London worked at the National Institutes of Health for two decades, where she directed the Neuropharmacology Research Laboratory and the Neuroimaging Research Center of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has authored 315 original research articles and 86 chapters and reviews, edited three books, and has delivered hundreds of invited lectures within the United States and internationally. Her work has been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2008 Marian Fischman Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the 2011 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.