Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker has worked and researched in the area of substance use, misuse and addictions among youth and emerging adults in both prevention and intervention realms since 1989.  Holleran Steiker’s research contributed to the Drug Resistance Strategies Minority Project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (RO1 DA05629-07 PIs Marsiglia & Hecht), for which she served as research associate and qualitative data analyst.  She conducted several funded pilot projects leading up to her K01 (5K01DA017276) funded by NIDA from 2003-2009.  Her work tested an evidence-based substance abuse prevention intervention with a particular focus on the impact of cultural grounding in prevention efforts.  She has worked extensively with the UT Center for Students in Recovery and aided in the groundbreaking 2012 UT Systemwide expansion to all 9 University of Texas campuses.  In 2014, she founded University High School, Central Texas’ first recovery high school, and extended her research to this intervention.  She began her work in the area of Opioid Response in 2015 partnering with community agencies and the UT School of Pharmacy creating Operation Naloxone, a model campus opioid response initiative, leading to a $3 million Texas Targeted Opioid Response Grant (PI Hill; Co-PI, Holleran Steiker) with a follow-up State Opioid Response grant for $7 million starting this year. She served as the Board Chair of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance and on the University High School Executive Board as well.  This past year, she was appointed by HHSC to the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund Council, formed to ensure that money recovered through the joint efforts of the state and its political subdivisions through a statewide opioid pharmaceutical settlement agreement is allocated fairly and spent to remediate the opioid crisis using efficient, cost-effective methods.

Dr. Holleran Steiker was the Director of the Youth and Emerging Adult Substance Use, Misuse and Recovery Pop-Up Institute (https://sites.utexas.edu/youthsubstancemisuse/) funded by the VP of Research.  She authored Youth and Substance Use: Prevention, Intervention and Recovery (2016) and has close to 100 peer reviewed publications.  After becoming the Steve Hicks Professor of Addictions and Substance Abuse Services, she started and began chairing the UT Opioid Response Consortium (UTORC).  She has also been appointed as the Associate Director for Education and Instruction of the UT Steve Hicks School of Social Work’s Addictions Research Institute.

In 2018, Dr. Holleran Steiker was promoted to Associate Dean & Director of Instruction, Engagement and Wellness in UT Undergraduate Studies and, in this role, partnered with UT Student Affairs, helping to envision and initiate the SHIFT initiative to engage the whole community in dialogue that changes the culture of campus substance use from one of misuse to one of well-being (https://shift.utexas.edu). She serves on the Executive Leadership Team for SHIFT and is devoted to engaging and educating numerous faculty members and students and community members about youth with SUD, their families, challenges and recovery solutions. 

Liliane Cambraia Windsor, Ph.D., MSW is Associate Deanfor Research and Associate Professor of Social Work at The University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Windsor’s research focuses on the applicationof critical consciousness theory to the development of multi-levelinterventions designed to promote health equity in the fields of substance usedisorders treatment, infectious disease, and criminal legal system inmarginalized communities. Dr. Windsor follows community based participatoryresearch (CBPR) principles and the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST). Sheutilizes a variety of scientific methodologies including ethnography,randomized experimental controlled trials, measurement development,meta-analysis, and online survey. She is the founder and chair of the CriticalConsciousness Collaborative, a group of researchers, service providers, andconsumers who partner with marginalized communities to develop evidence-basedhealth interventions with real world impact. Dr. Windsor is currently theprincipal investigator of two large randomized controlled trials funded by theNational Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the NationalInstitute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to optimize the COVID-19 Preventionand Treatment Cascade.  Dr. Windsor is a2019-2020 Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with a placement in SenatorDick Durbin’s office. Born and raised in Brazil, Dr. Windsor received herBachelor of Science degree in Education from FCH-FUMEC, Brazil in 1998. Shemoved to Texas in 2000 to pursue her Master of Science and doctoral degrees inSocial Work from The University of Texas at Austin.