SHARON C. WILSNACK, PhD.

Sharon Carlson Wilsnack, Ph.D. received her B.A. in psychology from Kansas State University, her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, and studied as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany. She is presently Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Dr. Wilsnack’s background includes experience as a substance abuse therapist and treatment program director as well as in research and medical education. She has published extensively on issues related to substance abuse in women, and has addressed numerous national and international audiences. She is co-editor with Linda Beckman of the volume Alcohol Problems in Women: Antecedents, Consequences, and Intervention (New York: Guilford Press, 1984) and with Richard Wilsnack of Gender and Alcohol: Individual and Social Perspectives (Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1997).

Sharon Wilsnack and Richard Wilsnack direct a 20-year longitudinal study of drinking behavior in U.S. women, and coordinate an international collaborative research project on gender and alcohol that involves researchers from 35 countries. Sharon Wilsnack is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She served as a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee to Study Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, as a member of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health, and on numerous other boards and advisory groups concerned with alcohol abuse and women’s health. She is presently a member and panel chair of the Subcommittee on College Drinking of NIAAA’s National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.