Gaetano Di Chiara is Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Cagliari. After the degree in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Cagliari, Italy, he spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology (National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland, USA) where he developed a rat model of human drug-induced hemolysis.

Back in Italy, he got a permanent position as Assistente di ruolo to the chair of Pharmacology of the University of Cagliari and was charged of the teaching of Toxicology and Pharmacology in the medical school. In 1980 he was appointed Full Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the medical school and in 1983 was called to teach Pharmacology and Pharmacognosy in the Faculty of Pharmacy, serving as Dean of the same Faculty from 1997 to 2006.

Professor Di Chiara has been President of the National Pharmacy Faculty Deans Conference, of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (EBPS), of the Federation of the European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) and of the Italian Society of Neuroscience (SINS). According to ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) of Philadelphia (USA), he is among the most cited researchers in the fields of Neuroscience and Pharmacology. His research is focused on drugs that affect the central nervous system and on the neurotransmitter mechanism of drug-addiction.