Kathleen K. Bucholz, PhD, MS

2024 Dean’s Impact Award Recipient

Kathleen K. Bucholz, PhD, displays an unwavering commitment to mentorship and dedication to the success of her trainees, inspiring and substantially impacting their success. Bucholz is a psychiatric genetic epidemiologist who has conducted research on substance use, problems and disorders in high-risk community and clinical samples for over 30 years. Her interests are in the development, progression and long-term course of alcohol and other substance-use disorders (AOSUDs) and comorbid phenotypes, the influence that genes and environment play in this unfolding, familial (and particularly parental) influences on offspring outcomes, and race/ethnic differences in substance involvement. She has also held significant leadership roles, including serving as the administrative director of the Family and Population Research Center, where she oversees the use of state administrative data (birth, death, marriage and divorce vital records, and driving records) in research studies. She has been recognized for mentoring excellence with the Distinguished Faculty Award for Postgraduate Education from WashU Medicine and a mentoring award from the Academic Women’s Network at Washington University. Bucholz’s mentorship extends beyond WashU Medicine to the Brown School, where she has been appointed as courtesy faculty since 2013, is a member on 11 dissertation committees for doctoral candidates, serves as sponsor or co-sponsor of five F31 awardees from the Brown School, and offers informal advising.