Rick Strassman is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He trained as a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry with a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research and holds degrees from Stanford University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He has held a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research at the University of California San Diego and was Professor of Psychiatry for eleven years at the University of New Mexico. After twenty years of intermission, Strassman was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, or entheogenic substances with his research on DMT. He is the author of the well-known book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" which summarizes his academic research into DMT.