The Rutgers Addiction Research Center is working with our new Leadership Council to raise money for RARC research projects. We would like to include your work in our fundraising efforts.
To be included we need you to submit a brief, plain-language description of your ongoing project(s) by October 15, 2025 – one entry per project, multiple projects welcome. You can reply to this email using the template below or use the short form.
To make the submissions consistent and impactful, please use the following format:
- Exciting Discovery – What are the most important findings from your work or field? (You can submit more than one!)
- Translation Potential – How could this discovery make a difference for people with substance use disorders? Who would benefit (e.g., patients, clinicians, policymakers)?
- Next Steps/Needs – What would it take to move this work forward and increase its impact (e.g., resources, funding, scaling a platform, partnerships)?
Please keep your entry short, clear, and understandable to an educated lay audience. Our fundraising efforts will be centered around the research projects that are submitted. We want to represent the breadth of research on-going at RARC, so please submit your work to have it included in our fundraising efforts.
Please let Danielle Dick or Ricki Arvesen (ricki.arvesen@rutgers.edu) know if you have any questions.
Sample Submission:
My team is leading a large international project to identify genes involved in addiction and related mental health challenges. Using data from >4 million individuals, we have identified more than 1,200 locations in the genome that influence why some people are more at risk of developing problems than others. We also conduct studies in which we have followed >15,000 children across three countries from early childhood into adulthood, enabling us to discover the behavioral and environmental factors in early life that are most predictive of developing a substance use problem. Using this information, we have built a platform to provide personalized addiction risk profiles that integrate genetic, behavioral, and environmental information. Having access to one’s personal addiction risk information can be used to prevent problems before they start and/or tailor treatment to an individual’s risk profile. What is needed now is funding to scale this platform and make it available to individuals, treatment centers, and communities.