Brian F. Thomas earned his doctoral degree in 1992 from the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. He then joined Research Triangle Institute and assumed the role of Principal Investigator on National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research contracts titled “Purity Specifications, Storage and Distribution for Medications Development, “Preparation and Distribution of Research Drug Products, and “Production, Analysis and Distribution of Cannabis, Marijuana Cigarettes and Related Materials. Serving in these roles, he coordinated the preparation and analysis of research drugs and substance abuse treatment medications at RTI for over 28 years. In addition to contract research, Dr. Thomas served as Principal Investigator on several NIDA R01 grant-funded research awards involving the characterization of cannabinoid ligand-receptor interactions and their relationship to in vivo pharmacological effects.In 2019, he joined Canopy Growth Corporation as Senior Director, Analytical Chemistry, Discovery Sciences, and Pharmaceutics, where he had management oversight of drug substance and product testing to support preclinical and clinical studies of cannabinoids in accordance with regulatory guidance. He also directed the integration of medicinal chemistry and in vitro pharmacological screening approaches to support development of consumer products and drive clinical drug discovery and therapeutic product development and commercialization efforts. He was subsequently recruited by The Cronos Group to serve as the Director of Analytical Sciences, with management oversight of scientists at production and research and development facilities in the United States, Canada, and Israel. He also engaged with the US Hemp Roundtable and other trade and scientific organizations to provide critical input to regulations and regulatory oversight by state, federal, and international regulatory authorities. He is currently providing pharmaceutical consulting services as the Principal Scientist at Empirical Pharmaceutical Services, LLC. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Bright Green Corporation and Biopharmaceutical Research Company, two of the cannabis companies selected by the US government to grow, manufacture, and sell, legally under federal and state laws, cannabis and cannabis-related products for research, pharmaceutical applications, and export. He has authored or co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts and numerous book chapters, coauthored a book, and served as the Series Editor of Elsevier’s Emerging Issues in Analytical Chemistry. Mahmoud A. ElSohly is a Research Professor in National Center for Natural Products Research, Director of the Marijuana Project, and Professor of Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at the University of Mississippi. His Research has been continuously funded since 1981 by NIDA and other agencies. He holds more than 40 patents and has authored over 400 scholarly articles. He is also President and Laboratory Director of ElSohly Laboratories, Inc., a testing and drug development company in Oxford, Mississippi. Dr. Suman Chandra earned his BS in Physical Sciences, MS in Physics, and MPhil in Environmental Plant Physiology with an emphasis on Biophysics from HNB Garhwal University. He completed his PhD in Plant Physiology at the High Altitude Plant Physiology Research Center, HNB Garhwal University. Dr. Chandra worked at the High Altitude Plant Physiology Research Center and the G.B. Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment from 1992 to 2000. In 2001, he joined the University of Mississippi, where he currently serves as a Principal Scientist at the National Center for Natural Products Research and Research Professor of Biomolecular Sciences in the School of Pharmacy. He also serves as Co-Director of the NIDA Marijuana Project at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Chandra has over 25 years of experience in the field of cannabis and cannabinoid research and has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and four scholarly books in the field. He also serves as the editorial board member of several scientific journals, including Frontiers in Plant Science, Scientific Reports, and Planta Medica.
