Medical & Scientific Advisors

Dr. Mark Swaim graduated from Duke University with honors, where he was an NIH-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program scholar and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and served as its president. He completed post-graduate training in internal medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology at Duke University Medical Center and post-doctoral research at National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Dr. Swaim served on the faculties of Duke University Medical Center, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the McGovern Medical School of University of Texas in Houston. He was elected to fellowship in the American College of Physicians. He is editor-in-chief and founder of BioPub.co, a small-cap biotech special situations investing website with a global following.

Jacky Smith is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Manchester and an Honorary Consultant at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. She runs a multi-disciplinary research team whose focus is on understanding mechanisms underlying pathological cough and a regional clinical service seeing patients with refractory chronic cough. She is also the Director of the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility and Leads the Rapid Translational Incubator Theme of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.

In collaboration with Mr. Kevin McGuinness (clinical engineer), she has developed a novel method for semi-automated cough detection that has been licensed to a medical device company (Vitalograph Ltd) with whom she collaborates. The subsequent commercialization of this cough monitoring system has changed the standards by which novel cough therapies are evaluated in regulatory clinical trials. Moreover, the use of this system to quantify coughing in a study of patients attending her chronic cough clinic facilitated the discovery of a new class of efficacious anti-tussive therapy, P2X3 antagonists.

Dr. Dicpinigaitis is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine. He is a faculty member of the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and is the founder and director of the Montefiore Cough Center, one of the few specialty centers in the world exclusively committed to the evaluation and management of patients with chronic cough.

He received his undergraduate education at New York University (NYU) where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biochemistry. He obtained his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine and remained at NYU-Bellevue for internal medicine residency training. He completed a fellowship in pulmonary & critical care medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, immediately after which he came to Einstein/Montefiore.

In addition to experience in all aspects of clinical medicine within the spectrum of pulmonary and critical care, a major focus of Dr. Dicpinigaitis' clinical research for over 25 years has been in the area of cough. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on cough and is considered an authority on the performance of cough challenge studies in clinical research. He served as a co-author on cough management guidelines published by the American College of Chest Physicians as well as the European Respiratory Society and is the founder and chairman of the biannual American Cough Conference. Dr. Dicpinigaitis also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal LUNG.

Dr. Kolb is the Moran Campbell Chair and Professor in Respiratory Medicine and Director of the Division of Respirology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is lead of the interstitial lung disease program, located at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, where more than 1,500 patients with different types of fibrotic interstitial lung disorders are seen annually. His major research interests are the mechanisms of lung fibrosis, with a particular interest in the role of growth factors, matrix abnormalities and pulmonary vessel remodeling in disease progression.

He leads activities in biomarker development for lung fibrosis and is a Principal Investigator and steering committee member in numerous clinical trials. Dr. Kolb has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications on different basic science and clinical topics. He is the Chief-Editor of the European Respiratory Journal, the flagship publication of the European Respiratory Society. He is also an editorial board member of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, the European Respiratory Review and Respirology and serves on the Lung Injury & Repair Study Section for the National Institute of Health.

Dr. Rick Strassman is a native of Los Angeles and obtained his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. His book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001) has sold 250,000 copies, been translated into 12 languages, and is the basis of a successful independent documentary that he co-produced. He is currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the UNM School of Medicine. He trained in general psychiatry at UC Davis in Sacramento and took a clinical psychopharmacology research fellowship at UC San Diego. Joining the faculty at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1984, his clinical research with melatonin discovered its first known function in humans.

Between 1990 to 1995, Dr. Strassman performed the first new US clinical research with psychedelic drugs in a generation. His studies involved DMT, and to lesser extent psilocybin, and received federal and private funding. From 1995 to 2008, he practiced general psychiatry in community mental health and the private sector. He has authored or co-authored nearly 50 peer-reviewed papers, has served as guest editor and reviewer for numerous scientific journals, and consulted for various government, non-profit, and for-profit entities.

Dr. David Nutt is currently the Edmund J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology in the Division of Brain Science, Department of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London. He is also visiting professor at the Open University in the UK and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Dr. Nutt is also Chair of the charity DrugScience (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD). He has been President of major national and international organizations: the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association for Psychopharmacology, the European Brain Council, and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In recognition of his research success, he has been made a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, of Psychiatrists, and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is also the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders Courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. He has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over twenty-five years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs, and 31 books, including one for the general public--Drugs Without the Hot Air--which won the Transmission book prize in 2014.

Dr. Nutt was the clinical scientific lead on the 2004/5 UK Government Foresight initiative “Brain science, addiction and drugs” that provided a 25-year vision for this area of science and public policy.

Dr. Ede Frecska is the Chairman of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Debrecen. He received his medical degree in 1977 from the Semmelweis University in Hungary. He then earned qualifications as a certified psychologist from the Department of Psychology at Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest. Dr. Frecska completed his residency training in Psychiatry both in Hungary (1986), and in the United States (1992). He is a qualified psychopharmacologist (1987) of international merit with 17 years of clinical and research experience in the United States, where he reached the rank of Associate Professorship. 

During his academic years, Dr. Frecska’s studies were devoted to research on schizophrenia and affective illness. In his recent research he is engaged in studies on psychointegrator drugs, especially on the physiological effects of DMT in acute and chronic cellular stress like hypoxia. His theoretical work focuses on the interface between cognitive neuroscience and quantum brain dynamics. He is specifically interested in the mechanism of initiation ceremonies and healing rituals. He published more than 100 peer reviewed scientific papers and book chapters on these topics. Dr. Frecska is a member of several professional organizations (APA, ECNP, CINP), and has received grants and awards from a variety of sources (NARSAD, NIAA). Together with Slawek Wojtowicz, Luis Eduardo Luna, and fellow Algernon Medical & Scientific Advisor Dr. Rick Strassman, Dr. Frecska is the co-author of “Inner Paths to Outer Space”. He has also contributed chapters in Ervin Laszlo’s books “The New Science and Spirituality Reader” and “A New Map of Reality”. 

Dr. Steven Wolf is a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, where he explores novel interventions to improve extremity use in patients with stroke as well as mechanisms of cortical reorganization and inter-joint coordination associated with such changes. He is a world expert in physical therapy, a prolific and innovative researcher and leader who has made seminal contributions to patient care, and a highly sought-after lecturer and teacher who has been a valued mentor to students, residents, and faculty. Dr. Wolf’s research has been widely disseminated via more than 300 publications. He has also authored or co-authored nine books that have become major pillars in the fields of physical therapy and rehabilitation medicine. Dr. Wolf has additionally made numerous appearances on National Public Radio and CNN, as well as multiple other media outlets as a subject expert commentator.

Anthony Rudd, MB, BChir, FRCP, CBE is an emeritus professor of Stroke Medicine at Kings College London and recently retired as a consultant stroke physician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. He was the London Stroke Clinical Director from 2010-2019 and the National Clinical Director for Stroke for NHS England from 2013-2019, where he oversaw dramatic improvements in the paradigm of NHS stroke treatment.

For over 20 years he chaired the Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party at the Royal College of Physicians which was responsible for developing the National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke and running the National Sentinel Stroke Audit program. He chaired the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guidelines Group for Acute stroke and TIA and the NICE Stroke Quality Standards Development Group. He is also past president of the British Association of Stroke Physicians and is Honorary Vice President of the Stroke Association.

Dr. Rudd was educated at Cambridge and King’s College London, receiving his medical degree in 1978. His research interests are stroke rehabilitation, organization of care and quality improvement. He has published over 300 peer reviewed publications and supervised fourteen higher degrees. He was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2013 in recognition of his services to stroke medicine.

Robert Simister MA MB BS PhD FRCP is a consultant neurologist and stroke physician as well as an honorary senior lecturer at University College London, where he also serves as the Clinical Lead for the Comprehensive Stroke Service and the Clinical Director of Stroke Medicine and Acute Neurology. Since 2019, he has been the Joint Clinical Director for the London Stroke Clinical Network.

Dr. Simister received his medical degree from the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, now part of Imperial College London, and was awarded his PhD in Neuroscience from University College London in 2012. In addition to his consulting and directorial responsibilities, he maintains an active research program directed towards improving outcomes for stroke patients.

Dr. Zoltán Nagy is a neurologist and a research doctor with a focus on brain damage, neuron destruction and apoptosis research, and running clinical studies dealing with post-stroke plasticity and bioelectric imaging. In 1966, Dr. Nagy graduated summa cum laude from the Faculty of General Medicine of the Budapest University of Medicine. In 1969, he obtained his professional qualification as a pathologist at the Institute of Pathology. In 1971, he was admitted to the Neurological and Psychiatric Clinic and in 1980 obtained a neuropathology qualification. In 1981, he became the head of the Cerebrovascular Department of the clinic and the consultant of the Vascular and Cardiovascular Surgery Clinic.

In 1991 he was appointed university professor. In 1994, he was appointed to the administration of the National Center for Brain Diseases, and after the National Psychiatry and Neurology Clinic placement of the Center, he was transferred to this institute as department head and stroke director. He is the founding president of the Hungarian Stroke Society and from 2002-07 was the director of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology (OPNI) and the National Institute of Clinical Neuroscience (2012-18). He is currently (2019) professor emeritus of Semmelweis University and Pannon University in Hungary, head of the OKITI neuro-epidemiology working group, member of ETT-TUKEB (since 2010), president of the Semmelweis University Consistory, and member of the MAB Review Committee.

Dr. Andrew I. R. Maas is Emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery at the Antwerp University Hospital and University of Antwerp. He holds positions as past Chairman of the Neurotraumatology Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS) and the International Neurotrauma Society, and is Co-Chairman of the European Brain Injury Consortium. He has a vast experience as a general neurosurgeon and has specific research interests in Traumatic Brain Injury and neuro-intensive care.

Dr. Maas was the Principal Investigator of the IMPACT study group (International Mission on Prognosis and Clinical Trial design in TBI), that was awarded an NIH grant (2003-2011) and resulted in over 55 publications and recommendations for improved trial design. Currently, together with Prof David Menon, University of Cambridge, he coordinates the large-scale collaborative project CENTER-TBI: Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in TBI (www.center-tbi.eu), supported by the FP7 program of the European Union (Grant no: 602150; duration:2013-2020). He received an Honorary doctoral degree at the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery in Moscow in 2013 and Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on traumatic brain injury from the International Brain Injury Association in 2016. 

Dr. Maas is member of various editorial boards, review committees and is a reviewer for over 35 international journals. In total he has authored over 250 publications in peer reviewed international journals.

Dr. Brody, MD, PhD is a board-certified neurologist with both a research and clinical specialization in TBI and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Brody was the Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Brody was also the Washington University Site Director for the National Football League (NFL) Neurological Player Care Program. His research focuses on accelerating implications for better diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of traumatic brain injury.

Dr. Brody’s achievements have been recognized with several awards, including a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences. His clinical monograph entitled Concussion Care Manual: A Practical Guide was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. Dr. Brody is the editor in chief of the journal of Neurotrauma and a member of the Editorial Board of Acta Neuropathologica.