Prof. Maria Antonietta De Luca is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Neuroscience Unit of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Cagliari (Italy). After an MSc in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, she completed a Specialization in Toxicology and a PhD in Pharmacology of Drug Abuse at the University of Cagliari, supervised by Prof. Gaetano Di Chiara. In her career she has developed a strong expertise in the field of the neurochemistry and behavioural pharmacology, with a major focus on the role of mesolimbic and mesocortical dopaminergic transmission in the origin of drug addiction. She has over 15 years of experience with in vivo microdialysis in rodents for monitoring brain monoamines following the administration of drugs of abuse and natural rewards.  She also has a wider knowledge on animal models of drug addiction with particular reference to the rewarding properties of cannabinoids and endocannabinoids, and novel psychoactive substances (NPS). Her knowledge in this research field has improved in 2002–2004 spending several months as a Guest Researcher at the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Baltimore (MD, USA) in the team of Dr. S.R. Goldberg. In 2014, she completed a Fulbright Research Scholar activity as a Visiting Scientist at the Committee on Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders of the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI, La Jolla, CA, USA). At TSRI, she joined the team of Dr. L.H. Parsons for studying the addictive properties of synthetic marijuana (i.e. JWH-018) and the genetic predisposition toward cannabinoid addiction. In the past years, she was a member of the EU-MADNESS team for looking at Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS). She has been also PI of two National Research Project investigating the pharmacological characterization of NPS and Coordinator Assistant of JUSTSO project.