Dr. Glynn is, from 2014 to the present, Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine and Executive Team Member, Mayo Clinic Global Bridges Initiative. From 1998 to 2014, he was Director, Cancer Science and Trends and Director, International Cancer Control at the American Cancer Society (ACS). Prior to the ACS, Dr. Glynn was, from 1991 to 1994, Associate Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Control Science Program and, from 1991 to 1998, Chief of the NCI's Cancer Control Extramural Research Branch.. From 1983 to 1991, he was Research Director for the NCI's Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program and from 1978 to 1983, he was a Research Psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Glynn has published widely on cancer and tobacco use prevention and control, both in the scientific literature and for consumer, professional, and patient education. In addition to his work at the ACS and NCI, he has served as a consultant on cancer control and tobacco issues to such groups as the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the WHO, a variety of pharmaceutical organizations, and national, state and local governments. He has also served as a Senior Scientific Reviewer for the U.S. Surgeon General's Reports on Tobacco and Health, as Director of the World Health Organization Study of Health, Economic, and Policy Implications of Tobacco Growth and Consumption in Developing Countries, and has been active in tobacco control programs in Eastern Europe, Central America, and India. He is a Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and his awards include the U.S. National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Polish Ministry of Health Service Award, the Guatemala National Council for Tobacco Prevention and Control Meritorious Service Award, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco John Slade Award, and the American Society of Preventive Oncology Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award.  

Robin Mermelstein, PhD. is Distinguished Professor, Psychology Department; Director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and Co-Director of UIC’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science.  Dr. Mermelstein has been active in health-behavior research for 30 years, with continuous NIH funding as a Principal Investigator on grants since 1986. Dr. Mermelstein was acknowledged by the NCI as a Research Pioneer in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences. She is nationally recognized for her expertise in understanding trajectories and developmental patterns of youth tobacco use, for employing novel approaches to studying contextual factors in the development of nicotine dependence and health risk behaviors, for developing innovative health behavior clinical interventions for adolescents and adults, and for methodological issues in conducting tobacco-related research. She has been the PI of several large-scale, multidisciplinary program project and center grants, as well as the Director of a national program or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Mermelstein has served on many NIH advisory and review committees, including being a former standing member of the NCI-A Cancer Centers review committee; a former member of the External Scientific Advisory Panel for the NCI’s Science of Research and Technology Branch; co-Chair of the NCI’s Tobacco Control Priorities Consultant Group; a former standing member of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s K-award study section; and a current member of the External Scientific Advisory Board for the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study) of NIH. She has been acknowledged for her scientific accomplishments by several national and international research societies, including being named a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a Fellow of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco. She is a past President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (2015-2016).  

Mitch Zeller, J.D., was the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products from March 2013 through April 2022. The mission of CTP—established by enactment of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act—is “to make tobacco-related death and disease part of America’s past, not America’s future, and, by doing so, ensure a healthier life for every American family.”  As Center Director, Zeller led FDA’s efforts to use the tools of product regulation to reduce disease and death from tobacco use and bring previously unavailable information about its dangers to light. Zeller, a graduate of Dartmouth College and the American University Washington College of Law, worked on FDA issues from 1982 until his retirement in 2022. He began his career as a public interest attorney in 1982 at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). In 1988, Zeller left CSPI to become counsel to the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Government Operations Committee where he conducted oversight of enforcement of federal health and safety laws. In 1993, Zeller joined the staff of then-FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, M.D. What began as a two-week assignment by Kessler in 1994 to examine the practices of the tobacco industry led to his serving as associate commissioner and director of FDA’s first Office of Tobacco Programs. Instrumental in crafting the agency’s 1996 tobacco regulations, Zeller also represented FDA before Congress, federal and state agencies. Zeller also served as an official U.S. delegate to the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. In 2000, Zeller left FDA to continue his work for tobacco control as executive vice president of the American Legacy Foundation. His responsibilities there included marketing, communications, strategic partnerships, and creating the foundation’s first Office of Policy and Government Relations. In 2002, Zeller joined Pinney Associates where, as senior vice president, he provided strategic planning and communications advice on domestic and global public health policy issues involving the treatment of tobacco dependence and the regulation of tobacco products and pharmaceuticals.  He left Pinney Associates in 2013 upon his return to FDA as Center Director. Mitch Zeller has been appointed as Clinical Associate Professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and also serves as an advisor to Qnovia, Inc. a start-up pharmaceutical company developing an inhaled smoking cessation product that it intends to seek FDA authorization for marketing.

Ben Youdan started his career running the UK’s No Smoking Day Campaign in the early 2000’s before moving to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2006 to take on the role of ASH Director. He worked on the campaign for the Smokefree 2025 goal, and the policy steps to accompany it. In 2013 he took time out of tobacco control to work as the election campaign director for the New Zealand Green Party, and setting up a community led social change project in highly deprived communities in South Auckland. After working with these communities where vaping was disrupting generations of smoking, he returned to ASH with a particular interest in harm reduction as a tool to reduce inequity, and achieve Aotearoa New Zealand’s smokefree 2025 goal.  He currently splits his time between ASH, and as policy adviser to the New Zealand Heart Foundation.  

Martin has recently retired as Tobacco Control Programme Lead for (OHID) The Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (previously Public Health England). He joined PHE in February after 7 years at Action on Smoking and Health. Martin has worked in Public Health since the mid 1980’s when he was involved in HIV prevention work. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.

Nancy Rigotti, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Associate Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), founder and director of MGH’s Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, as well as Past President of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco and Past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine.  Dr. Rigotti is known for her leadership to incorporate the delivery of tobacco use treatment into routine health care delivery settings. She led JAMA’s 2022 Clinical Review, Treatment of Tobacco Use and co-led the American College of Cardiology’s Consensus Decision Pathway on Tobacco Cessation Treatment. Her research includes evaluations of tobacco control public policies, clinical trials of behavioral and pharmacologic smoking cessation treatments, and evaluation of system-level interventions for various inpatient and outpatient health care settings in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Rigotti was a member of the committee that produced the 2018 U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Report, Public Health Consequences of Electronic Cigarettes.  Her subsequent research on this topic has addressed the role of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation and harm reduction and interventions to assist e-cigarette users to quit.

Scott J. Leischow joined Arizona State University in June 2017, and until he retired in 2022 was a tenured Professor and the Executive Director of Clinical and Translational Science. He is currently a Research Professor in the College of Health Solutions. Dr. Leischow developed and implemented the Affinity Network and Translational Teams (ANTT) initiative that fosters transdisciplinary collaboration, as well as the Clinical and Community Translational Science (CCTS) initiative that fosters expanded and improved translational research. Prior to ASU, Dr. Leischow was at the Mayo Clinic Arizona from 2012-2017, where he led the Research on Health Equity and Community Health (REACH) Program and co-led cancer prevention and control within the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. He was formerly an Associate Director at the University of Arizona Cancer Center and also served as Chief of the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute within National Institutes of Health and Senior Advisor for Tobacco Policy in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Leischow completed his doctorate in Health Education from the University of Maryland, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University. Most of the work implemented by Dr. Leischow is translational in nature and dedicated to moving research into practice and policy. His research and publications focus on pharmacologic and behavioral treatments for tobacco dependence, tobacco regulatory science, and systems and network approaches to population health. Dr. Leischow has conducted numerous clinical studies over the past 25 years investigating the safety and efficacy of potential medications for smoking cessation, and many of his 100+ publications are in that area. In addition, Dr. Leischow has made significant contributions to telehealth behavioral interventions for smoking cessaton. Dr. Leischow created and implemented the Arizona Smokers Helpline, the third state quitline in the U.S. While at NCI and DHHS, he also played a leadership role in the development and implementation of the national smoking cessation quitline network, national smoking cessation website (smokefree.gov) and the national tollfree quitline number (1-800-QUITNOW). Dr. Leischow has also been actively involved in research to characterize the role of social and organizational networks for understanding collaboration, knowledge flow, and dissemination & implementation of evidence-based practices, primarily to improve tobacco control. Such network research initiatives have been implemented in multiple environments globally. In addition, Dr. Leischow has conducted research on the role of social media regarding e-cigarette use. Dr. Leischow has received multiple awards, including the NIH Director's Award, and he is past president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT).

The founder and managing director of ECigIntelligence, Tim is a UK-qualified attorney, having worked at the European Commission, BSkyB and Herbert Smith (an international law firm), AOL Europe, as director of public affairs at Betfair (IPO in 2010 valued at £1.5bn), and as a partner in a New York VC-funded start-up in the diamond sector. Tim holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the University of Law, London and a Masters in Geology from Oxford University.

Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D. is the Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Forster Family Chair in Cancer Prevention of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.   Her areas of expertise include nicotine addiction and its treatment and tobacco regulatory science assessing the toxicity, appeal and addictiveness of various tobacco products.  She has over 500 peer reviewed publications.  She has served on numerous scientific advisory boards or councils for the U.S. government including the FDA Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee. the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, and the National Advisory Panel for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.  She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation and the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Advisors.  She served as president of two scientific organizations, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

Dr. Pesko's research identifies the effects of health policy changes by combining economics reasoning, causal research methods, and survey and administrative data sources. He has published 85+ peer-reviewed papers, including over 25+ e-cigarette policy evaluation papers. He has been funded as PI of multiple R01s from the National Institutes of Health and Research Scholar Grants from the American Cancer Society. His research has been awarded approximately $10 million in funding. Current research funding supports evaluating e-cigarette policies and health insurance mandates for hearing aids and cancer prevention/detection services. Dr. Pesko is also the director of the Tobacco Online Policy Seminar, a free multidisciplinary, international forum for research with tobacco policy implications using experimental or quasi-experimental study designs. He also serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Center for Health Statistics in the United States, and the Canadian Scientific Advisory Board on Vaping Products.

Christian Matthew Saens is a doctoral candidate and 5th year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Starting in 2025, I have been a visiting student in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University. My dissertation committee consists of Michael Pesko (chair), Daniel Rees, Keith Teltser, and Lauren Hoehn-Velasco. I study applied microeconomics, including health and public economics. My research focuses primarily on topics related to substance abuse and health-related risky behaviors. Much of my research uses U.S. death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System. My job market paper studies how alcohol abuse and mortality are impacted in the long-run by policies experienced during adolescence. My other research explores the public-health impact of FDA regulation of nicotine delivery systems, how ridesharing affects external-cause mortality, and how emotional cues affect risky decisions involving alcohol, using evidence from the Super Bowl. My research is supported through the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This grant subaward provides $200,000 in support of my research on the effects of e-cigarette policies.

Jeff has recently been appointed Chief Engagement Officer for DF Medical Ventures, which seeks to market a medicinal smoking cessation product. Jeff Weiss was Chief Engagement Officer, General Counsel, and Interim President of NJOY, the third largest e-cigarette company in the United States.  An NJOY lawsuit against FDA, culminating in a 2011 D.C. Circuit decision in the company’s favor, paved the way for FDA regulation of non-medicinal nicotine products.  In 2022, NJOY became the first independent vaping company to secure PMTA authorizations from FDA.  Weiss’s tenure with NJOY ended with the company’s sale to Altria in June 2023.  Weiss has a Master’s Degree in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University, a law degree from Arizona State University College of Law, and an LLM in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law Center.  

Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.  He started out with the IT company, IBM, then switched career to work in the environment movement. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Blair’s Strategy Unit as a civil servant and worked in senior roles in the public sector and for the United Nations in Sudan. He is now Director of Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health.

Dr. Tracy Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and Co-Leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Hollings Cancer Center. Dr. Smith conducts tobacco regulatory science, which is science that aims to provide FDA and other regulatory bodies with information about how best to regulate tobacco with the goal of improving public health. The focus of Dr. Smith's research is regulations and interventions that might move people away from combustible tobacco products, which are responsible for the vast majority of the harm from tobacco. This includes research on regulations that might reduce the addictiveness or appeal of combustible cigarettes, including reducing nicotine to nonaddictive levels or banning menthol from cigarettes. Her program of research also includes trials assessing the impact of non-cigarette tobacco products as harm reduction tools. Dr. Smith has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers, and received funding from the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Food and Drug Administration. She currently serves as PI or MPI on 6 R01 clinical trials. In 2020, she received the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Jarvik-Russell Early Career Award for outstanding contributions to the field of nicotine and tobacco early in her career.

Neal L. Benowitz, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Research Program in Clinical Pharmacology, Division of Cardiology, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at UCSF for 35 years. Dr. Benowitz’s research interests have focused primarily on the human pharmacology and toxicology of nicotine and cannabis. He has published extensively and contributed to several US Surgeon General’s Reports on Smoking and Health in the areas of nicotine addiction and the cardiovascular effects of tobacco use, including cigarettes, water pipe and electronic cigarette use.  Dr Benowitz maintains an active clinical practice in cardiovascular medicine and medical toxicology. Dr Benowitz was a scientific editor of the 1988 United States Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health: Nicotine Addiction; a scientific editor of the 2001 NCI Monograph 13 Report on Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine; and served as section editor for the 2010 Surgeon General’s Report on How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease. He, has served as a member of the National Institutes of Health Pharmacology Study Section and the FDA Nonprescription Drug and Tobacco Products Science Advisory Committees. He has served as President of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and as President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Dr Benowitz has received the Ove Ferno, Alton Ochsner, and Rawls-Palmer Progress in Medicine awards, and the Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award in Therapeutics for his research on nicotine, tobacco, and health, and was the 2002 UCSF Annual Distinguished Clinical Research Lecturer.  

Dr Shahab is a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London, Head of the Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health and co-Director of the University College London Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group. He is past President of the European Chapter of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), elected fellow of the British Psychological Society and SRNT, co-Chair of the UK E-cigarette Forum and holds senior editorial roles at the journals Addiction, Nicotine & Tobacco Research and Plos One. Dr Shahab trained in psychology, epidemiology and neuroscience and has over 20 years’ experience in addiction research, tobacco control and health psychology. His expertise spans work on novel behavioural and pharmacological smoking cessation interventions, in particular e-cigarettes, biomarkers, tobacco product regulation and policy, digital health and tobacco and alcohol use epidemiology. Dr Shahab regularly engages with the media to discuss tobacco policy and research, collaborates with academic as well as non-academic (e.g., governmental and non-governmental) partners, and to date has authored over 220 scientific papers, reports and reviews in this area.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy, UMass Amherst. She’s recently moved from the University of Oxford in the UK, where she retains an honorary contract. She is an expert in evidence synthesis and an editor for Cochrane. She leads multiple high impact Cochrane reviews in the areas of tobacco control and vaping, which have informed international policy and guidelines. She is passionate about the communication of complex information and data to inform policy and public action.

Dr. Sherman is currently a Professor of Population Health, Medicine and Psychiatry NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He received his MD from NYU School of Medicine and completed an MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics at Boston University School of Public Health. He is a practicing physician in internal medicine and geriatrics and sees patients at the Veterans Health Administration (VA) in New York. His research studies have focused on how to redesign health care systems to better help people quit smoking. He is particularly focused on population health studies, examining the effectiveness of interventions in routine practice, as well as how to disseminate and implement them. He is currently studying the use of text messaging to support smoking cessation and behavioral economic strategies to help increase the use of tobacco cessation treatment. In addition, he is studying the impact of e-cigarettes for harm reduction in smokers with comorbid condition, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or coronary artery disease. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and is currently leading 5 large grants, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the VA and foundations. Dr Sherman is currently starting a research center at NYU School of Medicine focused on the health impact of vaping (either nicotine or cannabis).

Dr. Piper is a Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine within the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin (UW). She is a UW Chair for Tobacco Research and Intervention Research Professor and a Director of Research at the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI). Dr. Piper served as Associate Editor of Nicotine & Tobacco Research for seven years and was chair of the NIH Interventions to Prevent and Treat Addictions Study Section. She is a member of the UW Carbone Cancer Center, the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), and the Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence. She was elected President of SRNT in 2020 after serving two terms as Treasurer. Dr. Piper’s research interests focus on understanding, measuring and treating tobacco and nicotine dependence. She is also a licensed clinical psychologist who works with primary care patients on a variety of mental health issues.

"In her “day job”, Kim “Skip” Murray is a Direct Support Professional at a group home providing services to people living with disabilities. She is also a volunteer Public Health Advocate who uses her lived experience as a consumer of nicotine products and former vape shop owner to provide a meaningful voice in the Tobacco Harm Reduction space. She is a co-founder and content creator of the Safer Nicotine Wiki. Her passion project is Skip's Corner, “A safe place to talk about hard things,” where she writes about living with a disability and composes newsletters about Tobacco Harm Reduction. She completed the Rutgers Tobacco Treatment Specialist Training course in 2023 and continues to help people stop smoking on a volunteer basis, combining her training from Rutgers with her previous experience of owning a vape shop to provide a multifaceted approach to smoking cessation." Skip's Declaration of Interests: The "day job" is in quotes because I work 3 am - 9 am. My vape shop never sold products manufactured by the legacy tobacco companies. ("Big Tobacco") I worked at Taxpayers Protection Alliance from April 2022 to February 2024 as a Research Fellow for the Consumer Center. All my work was focused on tobacco harm reduction.

Jamie Tam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Tam uses simulation modeling methods to evaluate and understand the impact of tobacco regulations on tobacco use disparities, with a focus on populations with behavioral health conditions. She examines the implications of the relationship between smoking and depression for long-term health outcomes, and how policy interventions could be leveraged to maximize public health benefit. Dr. Tam has developed models that simulate the effects of policies on smoking and population health in the United States, and launched a web-based interface that allows users to explore the potential health effects of different tobacco control policies. She is a co-investigator with the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) consortium and currently co-leads studies evaluating the potential impact of flavor restrictions on tobacco-related health disparities with the Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations (CAsToR)--both NCI-funded cooperative agreements. Dr. Tam was previously a NAM Tobacco Regulatory Science Fellow at the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and was recently recognized as the 2023 recipient of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Jarvik-Russell Early Career Award.

Sharon Cox is a Principal Research Fellow within the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London. Collectively, she has over 20 years’ experience within substance use treatment and research. Her research focuses on tobacco dependence and cessation amongst people living with severe, and often unchanging, health and social needs. She has a special interest in tobacco harm reduction, specifically how quitting smoking using non-combustible nicotine products can improve health outcomes and quality of life among people experiencing homelessness and those with other drug dependencies. 

Ken Warner is a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. On the faculty from 1972-2017, he served as Dean from 2005-2010. He is currently a co-investigator in the University’s NCI-FDA funded Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations. His research has focused on economic and policy aspects of tobacco and health. Ken served as the World Bank’s representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He also served as the Senior Scientific Editor of the 25th anniversary Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health. He is a past President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Ken recently completed a term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern Michigan College. Ken received his AB degree from Dartmouth College and MPhil and PhD in economics from Yale University.    

Steve Cook is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. Prior to this, Steven earned a PhD from the University of Toronto and held faculty positions in Quantitative Methods and Criminology in Canada and the United Kingdom. He has been doing research in tobacco control for the past 5 years, and his research focuses on identifying disparities in the patterns of tobacco use across the life course, including barriers to smoking cessation without relapse, and the downstream health effects associated with tobacco product use.