ASRI Team

We have decades of experience designing, synthesizing, and characterizing psychedelics and other psychoactive agents.

We are uniquely positioned because we possess the Shulgin Vault of several hundred compounds previously synthesized by Sasha Shulgin. Many of these compounds are incompletely characterized or have unknown psychoactivity.

WORLD EXPERTS IN:

  • psychedelic drug design and synthetic chemistry
  • natural product isolation
  • detailed chemical analysis
  • in vitro identification of biological targets
  • in vivo assessment of drug activity in animals
  • design and execution of clinical research with human volunteers
  • drug formulation and delivery
  • legal, intellectual property, and patent abilities

Nicholas Vito Cozzi, Ph.D.
Founder

Dr. Cozzi is a scientist and educator with background and training in pharmacology, chemistry, toxicology, and neuroscience. He holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and a B.S. in Pharmacology and Toxicology, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy. Dr. Cozzi has published numerous articles focused on the chemistry and neuropharmacology of psychoactive drugs and is internationally recognized for his work.

Dr. Cozzi’s research involves the design, chemical synthesis, and pharmacological testing of substances with central nervous system activity, especially those with psychedelic, antidepressant, or psychostimulant effects. He is interested in how these agents act in the brain to promote neuronal  health, improve mood, enhance cognition, and increase awareness, and in their clinical value in treating addiction, depression, post-traumatic fear, neurological diseases, and other health ailments.

As an educator, Dr. Cozzi taught pharmacology at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, and he is a frequent guest lecturer at other academic institutions around the United States.

Dr. Cozzi has received several teaching and research awards, including a Distinguished Basic Science Teaching Award from the UW-Madison and a prestigious NARSAD Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation for his work involving the serotonin uptake transporter. His research has also been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the UW-Madison, and private foundations. Outside acdemia, Dr. Cozzi serves as a scientific consultant for legal, pharmaceutical industry, and government clients.

Dr. Cozzi collaborated with Dr. Shulgin from the mid-1980s until Sasha’s passing. During this period, they published a number of research articles that were focused on the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics, empathogens, and psychostimulants. Dr. Cozzi is Co-Founder, President, and Director of Pharmacology at the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute in Lafayette, CA.

Paul Freeman Daley, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.
Founder

Dr. Daley is a scientist with a broad background in environmental sciences, chemistry, and plant physiology. His university degrees in Environmental Toxicology and Entomology were granted from the University of California Davis and Berkeley campuses. He has over sixty publications in integrated pest management, plant photosynthesis, environmental chemistry, analytical instrumentation, and the pharmacology of psychedelics.  He has presented research findings on four continents in English, Spanish, and French.

Following his university work, focused on the environmental physiology of plant-insect interactions, Dr. Daley held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Université Laval in Québec, Canada, where he developed novel methods for measuring plant photosynthesis at the canopy level.  He continued this work as a post doc, then as a career scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California from 1984 to 2014.  His initial work ranged from analysis of vegetation responses to elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, visualization of in vivo photosynthesis via quantitative chlorophyll fluorescence imaging for detection of plant stress and disease, to development of fiber-optic chemical sensors for environmental pollutants.  He also engineeried unattended pollution monitoring systems for the Army, and performed bioremediation analysis through measurement of stable isotopes and radiocarbon in soil gases for the US Navy. Dr. Daley developed a real-time interfacing  system to couple between liquid chromatographs and large scale accelerator mass spectrometers for radiocarbon detection for pharmaceutical applications. This latter work was supported by the National Institute of Health and patented in 2012. He has participated on SBIR grant review panels for the Department of Energy (environmental monitoring and remediation) and the Environmental Protection Agency (environmental impacts of nanomaterials).

Dr. Daley worked with Dr. Shulgin from 2007 until Sasha’s passing in 2014, restoring the Shulgin Laboratory, extending Shulgin’s work on psychoactive tryptamines, and co-authoring The Shulgin Index, Volume One: Psychedelic Phenethylamines and Related Compounds, published by Transform Press in 2011.  He is Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer, and Chemist at the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute in Lafayette, CA, where his work focuses on the chemistry and pharmacology of psychostimulant and psychedelic drugs.

L. Ann Shulgin
Founder & Special Advisor


View Ann’s full bio here

Simon D. Brandt, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor

Dr. Brandt is Professor of Forensic Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences of Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His research is focused on the chemistry, analysis, and pharmacological properties of psychoactive substances including psychedelics in the context of psychopharmacology, medicinal chemistry, forensic science, and public health. Dr. Brandt has been a long-time associate of ASRI and has co-authored journal articles with Dr. Shulgin and ASRI scientists related to the synthesis, chemical analysis, and pharmacology of psychoactive tryptamines and phenylalkylamines. Dr. Brandt has a deep record of publications in the scientific literature and contributed to the preparation of The Shulgin Index, Volume One: Psychedelic Phenethylamines and Related Compounds (Transform Press, 2011).

James Keim, M.S.W.
Strategic Advisor

Mr. Keim is Founder and CEO of Both&, a company utilizing cutting edge science, testing, and production methods to make natural psychedelics widely accessible and affordable. He is a psychedelic psychotherapist and Licensed Social Worker in the State of California, with a background in marital and family therapy.

John Turner, J.D.
Strategic Advisor

Dr. Turner served as a corporate attorney and business advisor for the law firm of Wilson Sonsini in Silicon Valley. Over a 17 year period, he planned and executed business agreements involving technology companies such as Google, Lyft, Napster, YouTube, and others before retiring in 2014. Dr. Turner founded Trippingly.net, a leading source for reliable information on psychedelics.