Roy W. Pickens died peacefully on May 25, 2022, at his home in Glen Allen, Virginia, where he and his wife, Dace Svikis have lived since 1999.  Dr. Pickens was one of the principal conceptual and innovative pioneers in the experimental analysis of drug taking behavior first in animal subjects and subsequently extending that research to human volunteers.  His studies helped establish behavioral pharmacology as a quantitative experimental subdomain of pharmacology.  Dr. Pickens subsequently translated the basic findings of drug reinforcement in animals to human subjects and turned to genetic influences on drug dependence in patients at treatment facilities in Minnesota.  Dr. Pickens moved in 1985 to the National Institute on Drug Abuse where he promoted research on the genetics of drug abuse and headed the NIDA AIDS/HIV program.  He subsequently directed the NIDA intramural Research Program and a laboratory on genetics of drug abuse within the NIDA IRP.  After leaving NIDA, Dr. Pickens returned to academia at Virginia Commonwealth University where he was involved in promoting new interdisciplinary research initiatives and cultivated interest in both basic and clinical women’s health research.  He retired from VCU in 2011.

Dr. Pickens received his doctoral degree in Psychology from the University of Mississippi in 1965, with a thesis that examined the conditioning of locomotor effects of d-amphetamine (supervised by William F. Crowder).  He then accepted a post-doctoral fellowship in a USPHS Psychopharmacology Training Program (directed by Drs. Travis Thompson, Gordon Heistad and Frederick Shideman) at the University of Minnesota.  That program was the preeminent program of its time, and one through which many of the next generation of behavioral pharmacologists were to come.  He joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 1966 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, with adjunct appointments in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychology.  The early emphasis of his research at Minnesota was drug dependence, specifically examining the reinforcing effects of abused drugs (or drug self-administration).  The time was ripe for these types of studies with the first only having been published a few years earlier.  Dr. Pickens, with Dr. Travis Thompson, were Co-Principal Investigators on a NIMH grant studying morphine self-administration and shortly thereafter Dr. Pickens was awarded a grant for the study of behavioral dependence on non-narcotic drugs.  These were two of the earliest grants funded by the NIDA when it was established in 1974. 

Possibly the most influential of the papers published during that time systematically examined the effects of cocaine dose and schedule of reinforcement on cocaine self-administration (Pickens and Thompson, 1968).  Within that paper was a series of studies directed at what seemed to be unique aspects of cocaine as a reinforcing stimulus.  At intermediate to high doses there was an inverse relationship between cocaine dose and response rate, an outcome unexpected if cocaine dose was thought to be reinforcer magnitude.  However, Pickens and Thompson established that food reinforcement under conditions resembling those used with cocaine also yielded an inverse relationship between reinforcement magnitude and response rate.  One of the most striking characteristics of cocaine self-administration was regularly spaced pauses after reinforcement, with times between injections directly related to drug dose.  This observation suggested that subjects titrate the degree of effect or levels of drug in blood or brain.  Pickens and Thompson delivered i.v. cocaine to a rat responding under a fixed-ratio schedule of food reinforcement and found the pause in responding following the injection to be directly related to dose and of the same duration as the pause in responding that followed the self-administration of that dose of cocaine.  Thus, the pause following cocaine injection was independent of whether cocaine was the reinforcer indicating that a dose-titration hypothesis was not necessary to explain the time between successive injections (Pickens and Thompson 1968). In other studies (Yokel and Pickens, 1974), whole body levels of d- or l-amphetamine and blood levels of d- or l-[¹⁴C] amphetamine were determined at the time of response-produced injections. During the latter portions of the experimental sessions, the actual blood levels determined at the time the subject emitted a response were comparable, regardless of the drug dose which was interpreted as consistent with a dose-titration hypothesis.  Returning to the issue later, Pickens and colleagues (2003) examined the self-administration of cocaine, remifentanil or food and found latencies between injections most consistent at the highest doses but that the drug levels predicted from pharmacokinetic parameters at the time of an injection were least consistent at these doses, suggesting that highly consistent response patterns are not simply a product of precise titration of drug levels.

In the mid-1970’s Dr. Pickens, along with Drs. Thompson, Leonard Heston and Elke Eckert, established a research ward at the University of Minnesota Hospital to study human drug dependence.  In that controlled environment they examined the translational potential to human participants of the basic findings of drug reinforcement in animals.  This research extended the research on drug-dependent humans conducted at the Public Health Service hospital in Lexington, Kentucky (the Addiction Research Center) to integrate the emerging techniques used to study drug self-administration.  Additionally, the research led to a NIDA supported treatment program focused on alcohol and sedative dependence in women, which focused on behavioral and pharmacological variables controlling human sedative self-administration (e.g., Pickens et al., 1977).  One part of the program was a focus on the effectiveness of contingency management in reducing sedative drug use.  Other studies focused on benzodiazepines (e.g., Healey and Pickens 1983), presaging a period when the abuse potential of these drugs would come under intense scrutiny.

Dr. Pickens also conducted some of the first studies directed at an experimental analysis of tobacco smoking.  He and his colleagues concentrated first on the topography of smoking, examining puff volumes and nicotine yield (e.g., Gust and Pickens, 1982).  The research progressed to studies characterizing the nicotine withdrawal syndrome (Hughes et al., 1984; Hatsukami et al., 1984), environmental aspects determining whether nicotine in gum formulation would serve as a reinforcer, and further to treatment modalities for smoking cessation and the reduction of withdrawal symptomology (Pickens et al., 1983).

In the late 1970’s Dr. Pickens accepted a consultantship at the Hazelden Foundation, an alcohol/drug treatment facility located outside of Minneapolis, which became an influence throughout the rest of his career.  With his curiosity piqued by significant variability in human drug self-administration in the clinical ward, and some prompting from a geneticist colleague, Dr. Leonard Heston, he turned to investigations of genetic influences on drug dependence (e.g., Pickens et al., 1991).  With funding from NIAAA, he utilized the large number of individuals with alcohol/drug use disorders at Hazelden and initiated a twin/family study of alcohol/drug dependence which was ultimately extended to include twins from treatment facilities across Minnesota.  These studies were prescient, as the field of genetic influences on drug abuse was later to explode with advances in molecular biology.  The twin/family research identified phenotypes of drug dependence with high heritability which formed a basis for molecular research on genes for drug dependence.  The research clearly established substantial genetic influences on the abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

Dr. Pickens left Minnesota in 1985 for a position as Director of the Division of Clinical Research at NIDA where he managed the extramural research portfolio of grants and contracts in the varied areas of drug abuse treatment, prevention, behavioral pharmacology, community research, and clinical medicine, with support that eventually reached about $129 million annually.  Among his many significant accomplishments was the issuance of the first NIDA request for research proposals investigating genetic influences on drug dependence.  Dr. Pickens was also a NIDA leader in the institute’s efforts to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity in research and administration.  He later continued and extended those efforts at the NIDA Intramural Research Program.

In 1987 Dr. Pickens was appointed as the NIDA Associate Director for AIDS to address the rapidly growing problem of HIV infection being spread by needle sharing, unprotected sexual activity, and in utero transmission (primarily) by individuals addicted to heroin.  In this position he managed an extramural budget that approached $140 million annually to support basic, clinical, and epidemiological HIV/AIDS research.  In connection with this appointment Dr. Pickens served in several capacities as the NIDA representative for the public health response to the AIDS epidemic and played a critical role in providing much needed information about risk factors of AIDS to various at-risk populations (Leukefeld et al., 1991).

In 1989 Dr. Pickens was appointed Director of the NIDA Intramural Research Program, then called the Addiction Research Center, which had recently relocated from Lexington, KY to Baltimore, MD.  At the NIDA IRP he established scientific and administrative priorities.  A budget of approximately $25 million annually supported a 350-member staff that conducted research including molecular neurobiology, behavioral pharmacology, clinical treatment outcomes, and epidemiological research on the causes, consequences, and treatment of drug abuse/dependence and other addictive disorders.  His calm and rational leadership provided a climate of productivity in which research prospered and the careers of the scientific staff flourished.

After stepping down as Director of the NIDA IRP in 1994, Dr. Pickens assumed the position of Chief of the Clinical Neurogenetics Section where he continued to pursue his research on the behavioral and molecular genetics of drug dependence.  His analysis of data collected from the studies at Hazelden continued and he initiated new laboratory studies focusing on individuals with different allelic status of the dopamine D2 receptor gene.

On his return to academia in 1999 Dr. Pickens was appointed Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Vice President of Research at Virginia Commonwealth University.  His primary objective at VCU was the development of large-scale interdisciplinary new research initiatives, and to enhance federal funding at the University.  He cultivated interest in both basic and clinical women’s health research, spearheading VCU’s launch of a NIH-funded training program dedicated to Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health.  As PI of the program, Dr. Pickens formed multidisciplinary research teams on sex/gender differences and women’s health with VCU faculty members committed to training and mentoring a new generation of independent research scientists.  He was also involved in the re-building of the VCU system for protecting human research subjects as well as the program for animal care and use.  He retired from VCU in 2011.

During his career Dr. Pickens received a number of awards, including notably a USPHS Special Recognition Award in 1989 and in 1992 the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award (the second highest award in government service) given for his extramural clinical research, his work on AIDS, as well as his administration of the NIDA IRP.  Additionally, he was given the Michael Morrison Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence for his government service in 1999.  In 2016 Drs. Pickens and Thompson were reunited in sharing the P.B. Dews Lifetime Achievement Award for Research in Behavioral Pharmacology awarded by the Behavioral Pharmacology Division of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

As a mentor Dr. Pickens was unsurpassed.  He had the ability to express complexities with clarity which made him an extraordinarily effective teacher.  He was generous with his time and ideas and, possibly most importantly, always worked to create opportunities for his students, and later the more junior scientists at NIDA.  He conveyed his commitment to those students and colleagues, which was returned in their many contributions to the science of drug abuse and service to public health which are part of his enduring legacy.  He will be greatly missed by those whose lives he touched. 

Dr. Pickens is survived by his wife of 34 years, Dace Svikis and his children, Robert, Sharon, Marks, and Kristopher; sister, Bawana Cullen; ex-wife, Patricia Claycomb; niece, Sally Dukes; as well as five grandchildren and two great grandchildren.