Vice Dean for Research Candidate Seminar: Sterling McPherson

Sterling McPherson, PhD, is a candidate for the Vice Dean for Research position at the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.

Candidate Seminar
Date: Tuesday, January 21
Time: 11:10 a.m. – Noon
Location: SAC 20 and Zoom

Please contact Bethany Fruci at bfruci@wsu.edu with questions.

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Dr. Sterling McPherson earned his PhD in 2010 in Experimental Psychology (with an Applied Quantitative Methods minor), and then completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Behavioral Pharmacology, all at WSU. Since then, he has secured more than $63M in grants and contracts as PI or Co-I from 11 NIH institutes/centers and 16 other sponsors. He was competitively chosen to become an NIH Fellow of the Summer Institute on Randomized Clinical Trials in 2014. This is also the year when he began his own independent research program, the Analytics and PsychoPharmacology Laboratory (APPL), which has grown to more than 20 people. In this program and several others, he has become a leader of research in the key area of addiction science in the college of medicine and across the WSU system, collaborating with every degree granting college therein. He uses pharmacological, behavioral, and technological solutions to develop therapeutics primarily for substance use disorders in early phase clinical trials. In this work, he has extensive experience working with the NIH, FDA, VA, several international universities, and both federal and state governments to secure funding that will drive community impact. His work aligns succinctly with the mission and values of Washington State University.

In 2020, he was awarded the Joseph Cochin Young Investigator Award from his field’s premier international addiction science research society and is currently on its Board of Directors. He was also elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2020. He has collaborated with at least 10 different industry sponsors and received five NIH awards that are specifically designed to spur private-public partnerships through technology transfer opportunities. This has led to enormous opportunity and experience with engaging industry and spurring entrepreneurism. As an administrator, this has worked to secure him critical skills in how to effectively engage industry and actualize commercialization potential. He has active collaborations across at least eight countries, which continues to shape his approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He has reviewed for more than 30 journals from diverse fields and is the Associate Editor and Senior Editor/Deputy Statistical Editor at three of his field’s premier peer-reviewed research outlets. He has served on several NIH study sections for over 10 years and is currently the Chair for a standing study section at the Center of Scientific Review. At WSU, he has served as Chair and committee member on more than a dozen different committees across the university, as well as within his home college and department, and several national and international organizations. Lastly, he maintains a strong track record of 145 peer-reviewed publications, and over 200 oral presentations globally.

Dr. McPherson has worked for 14 years as faculty and eight years in administration. He has been a dean for research for six years and overseen several teams of people in research and administration, including liaising with ORSO, SPS, HR Purchasing Services and others. In his leadership roles, he has worked with a diverse array of WSU employees, and he has guided many investigators in the pursuit of large-scale, multidisciplinary research efforts, and faculty-led independent research programs, often surpassing their original goals. Expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion has been a natural tilt of his administrative work, research, teaching and service activities, such as focusing on minorities and some of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged and stigmatized groups in the country. As he progressed in his career, the need for meaningful equity in the opportunities offered to those of diverse backgrounds has only become more paramount. The personal and work-based relationships he has enjoyed has taught him paradigm-shifting perspectives about how people from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities experience the world. Dr. McPherson works to create a research environment that offsets the power dynamic experienced by such groups as much as our structural constraints will allow. For example, 19 of his 20 mentored graduate students have come from underrepresented backgrounds. Relatedly, he has meaningfully collaborated with or holds faculty appointments in every degree granting college at WSU, in many cases, with multiple departments. He is committed to being a champion and advocate for research system-wide while continuing to expand research across disciplines.