Dr. Ricardo Pautassi is a Principal Researcher at INIMEC-CONICET-UNC, an intramural research facility of the National council of Research of Argentina. He graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology and a Biological Sciences Ph.D., both degrees obtained at the National University of Córdoba (Argentina), where he is full Professor of Neurophysiology and Psychophysiology (Psychology Department). He enjoyed a post-doctoral position at SUNY Binghamton (US), under the auspices of the Fulbright Commission, and was a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (US) and at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). His research aims to analyze the rewarding effects of alcohol in adolescence, via experimental animal models. Dr. Pautassi is also interested in dissecting factors that mediate hazardous alcohol drinking in college students and youth. The main objective is to determine predictive factors for the vulnerability of excessive alcohol consumption in adolescents and underlying neurobiological mechanisms.