The conference workgroup is responsible for planning and organizing the annual National Conference on Addiction Recovery Science (NCARS). This year’s conference will take place virtually on September 23-24, 2026. The theme is “Driving Change Through Collaborative Addiction Recovery Science”.

We meet monthly to: 1) plan the conference theme, events, and schedule; 2) choose plenary/keynote speakers and sponsoring organizations; 3) create the call for proposals; 4) solicit, organize, and review proposal abstracts; 5) coordinate the mentor/mentee matching session; and 6) summarize conference feedback and analytics. We work in tandem with the Consortium on Addiction Recovery Science (CoARS) steering committee and collaborate with the Mentoring and Training workgroup in these efforts.

Please reach out to Dr. Lourah Kelly (lourah.kelly@umassmed.edu), Dr. Brandon Bergman (bgbergman@mgh.harvard.edu), or Dr. Amy Mericle (americle@arg.org) if you would like to join the workgroup.