Sara Jane Ward, PhD

Dr. Ward is Assistant Professor in the Center for Substance Abuse Research and Department of Pharmacology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. She earned her PhD in neuroscience at Wake Forest University, studying the neurobiology of cocaine and heroin addiction and their interactive effects. She conducted her own NIH-funded research under a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Temple University, where she began to study the role of cannabinoids in learning and memory and reward processing. Dr. Ward is currently working on several projects to elucidate the therapeutic potential of non-psychoactive cannabinoids using animal models of CNS injury and disease. She has received funding from both the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense investigating the efficacy of cannabidiol for the treatment of peripheral and central neuropathic pain. Other projects ongoing in her laboratory investigate the efficacy of cannabidiol and synthetic cannabinoids on a range of nervous system targets including stroke, traumatic brain injury, dental pain and substance use disorders.