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Dr. Gavril Pasternak holds the Anne Burnett Tandy Chair in Neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and heads the Laboratory of Molecular Neuropharmacology. After receiving his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Johns Hopkins University he completed his clinical training in Neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and then joined the faculty at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1979. His research has focused on opioid receptors and their mechanisms of action, resulting in over 300 publications. 

Dr. Pasternak has served on Editorial Boards for numerous scientific journals, is a recipient of a Senior Scientist Award and a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and has served on their Board of Scientific Counselors. He is a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and has been awarded the Millenium Prize from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the John J. Bonica Award from the Eastern Pain Association, the S. Weir Mitchell Award from the American Academy of Neurology and the Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Clinical Investigation from MSKCC. He has been a Wellcome Visiting Professor in the Basic Medical Sciences and a Sally Harrington Goldwater Memorial Visiting Professor.

He lives in New York City with his three children and is a co-founder of the Bernard “Doc” Schoenbaum Youth Lacrosse League, located in New York City. In 2001 he was honored as Man of the Year by the Metro Men’s Division Coaches Council of US Lacrosse.