Richard Garza PhD

Richard (Rich) De La Garza completed his Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Texas Medical Branch followed by postdocs at Harvard Medical School and Yale University School of Medicine. He has held faculty positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Baylor College of Medicine, and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Currently, Dr. De La Garza is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Dr. De La Garza is an addiction neuropharmacologist and conducts laboratory studies in humans to investigate the safety and efficacy of novel medications for methamphetamine, cocaine, and opioid use disorders. He is also interested in cancer prevention as it relates to smoking cessation research including research on e-cigarettes. Dr. De La Garza has published more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles and he has been funded for more than 25 years by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Cancer Institute. He has received numerous honors including being named a Distinguished Alumnus of his alma mater, and being appointed a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. De La Garza was a member of the Board of Directors and past President of the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence – the oldest and largest scientific society dedicated to addiction research in the country.