David Otiashvili, MD, PhD. Graduated from Tbilisi State Medical University in 1992, received qualification of Psychiatrist. Spent ten years in clinical work treating patients with substance use disorders. In 2003-2004 as a NIDA Hubert Humphrey Fellow studied substance abuse research at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. In 2014 received PhD in Health Psychology from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is an Associate Professor of Healthcare at the School of Natural Sciences and Medicine, Ilia State University. For last decade his major focus has been addiction research and education programs in addiction science. He served as a PI and Co-I for a number of international collaborative research projects, including NIDA funded RCTs and exploratory behavioural studies. David has been involved with harm reduction and drug policy advocacy at a national and regional level. He is an official lobbyist for drug policy and drug legislation in Georgian Parliament. He serves as representative of civil society sector in Georgian Interagency Drug Policy Coordinating Council.

Irma Kirtadze, M.D. Ph.D., – graduated from State Medical Academy of Georgia in 2006 and received the qualification in Psychiatry. Dr. Kirtadze studied public health research at the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam in 2005 and drug abuse research at the Amsterdam University. Dr. Kirtadze in 2018 received a PhD in Public Health from Ilia State University. She has experience in the clinical, epidemiological & behavioral research on substance use disorders; has experience in health program planning, implementation, and evaluation. Starting from 2010 she’s been actively involved in economic (costing, expenditure analysis, cost-benefit, optimization) studies of Medication Assisted Treatment and Harm Reduction Programs. Dr. Kirtadze has been involved with international consultancy missions related to efficiency evaluation of HIV prevention, treatment, and care programs in the European countries and Central Asia. The field of scientific interest is the evaluation of the efficiency of drug addiction prevention, treatment, and care programs in the gender context. As well as evaluating health risks associated with the use of novel psychoactive substances and the development of potential harm reduction interventions.

Dr. Mzia Tabatadze was graduated from Tbilisi State Medical University in 1986. She pursued an MPH degree from the University of California of Berkeley in 2001-2003. Currently she is a PhD student at School of Business of Ilia State University of Georgia. Dr. Tabatadze has over 20 years of experience in health policy and management. She has extensive experience in public health research. Dr. Tabatadze was actively engaged in number of behavioral surveillance surveys among HIV key populations groups as well as KAP studies among general population. She conducted program evaluation and sustainability research studies in various countries.

She obtained bachelor's degree of Psychology and Master’s degree of Addiction Studies at Ilia State University. Since 2017 she started working for Addiction Research Center Alternative Georgia as a research assistant. Tamari is a member of Georgian Association of Addictologists. She is a co-author of annual reports on drug situation in Georgia since 2018. She is particularly interested in New Psychoactive Substance (NPS) use, nightlife drug use and substance use in women.

In 2013 she graduated from the Faculty of Business Engineering of the Georgian Technical University with a degree in law. Since 2015 she is a masters’ degree student of the Faculty of Business Law (LLM) of the Tbilisi Free University. She is managing and coordinating scientific and advocacy projects since 2012 in Alternative Georgia.

Mariam Sherozia graduated from Ilia State University in 2020 with a BA in Psychology. In 2022, she received an MA in Addiction Studies. In the same year, she started working as a research assistant at the Addiction Research Center Alternative Georgia. Additionally, Mariam completed a 6-month course in digital marketing at the University of Business and Technology in 2022. Since then, she has been managing the Facebook page of Alternative Georgia. She is also the social media/content manager of the www.cpr.ge website. In 2022, Mariam served as a research assistant in an EMCDDA-funded general population study on psychoactive substance use. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Association of Addictologists. Her areas of interest include drug use among immigrants, harm reduction, novel interventions, prevention, and more.