Professor Robin Room is a sociologist who has directed alcohol and drug research centres in the United States, Canada and Sweden, and now in Australia, his native country. He has been an advisor for the World Health Organisation since 1975, and has received awards for scientific contributions in the U.S., Sweden and Australia, and the premier award in alcohol studies, the Jellinek Memorial Award for Alcohol Studies.
Professor Room has worked on social, cultural and epidemiological studies of alcohol, drugs and gambling behaviour and problems, and studies of social responses to alcohol and drug problems and of the effects of policy changes. He has been part of many cross-national research projects, and is coauthor of 30 books.
He has been president of an international scientific society (Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol) and of the Australian national peak organization of nongovernmental organizations in the field, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia. He is Editor-in-Chief of Drug and Alcohol Review, a major journal in the field.