Dr. Kent Vrana is the Elliot S. Vesell Professor of Pharmacology (Chair Emeritus) in the Department of Molecular and Precision Medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine. He has a BS from the University of Iowa and a PhD from the LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans.  He was a post-doctoral fellow in embryology and molecular biology at Johns Hopkins University.  Following faculty positions at West Virginia and Wake Forest Universities, in 2004, Dr. Vrana became Chair of Pharmacology at Penn State.  Dr. Vrana is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids, and associate editor of Pharmacology.  He has co-authored more than 225 scientific articles, book chapters, and monographs (including two textbooks).  In 2009, he was inducted into the Society of Distinguished Educators at the Penn State College of Medicine.  In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).  In 2023, he became the founding director of the Penn State Center for Cannabis and Natural Product Pharmaceutics.  In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). On June 30, 2024, he stepped down as Chair of Pharmacology after a nearly 21-year tenure. On April 30, 2025, he received the Penn State College of Medicine Career Research Excellence Award.