Biography

Dr. Dufresne is a Professor of Pharmacy at the URI College of Pharmacy and a Psychiatric Pharmacotherapy Specialist at the Providence VA Medical Center. His educational background includes his pharmacy degrees and certifications as well as earned doctorates in both pharmacology and psychology. He is engaged in teaching psychiatric and neurologic pharmacotherapy to students of pharmacy and assorted allied health fields. In addition to these activities, he provides clinical services at the Providence VAMC to psychiatric outpatients and has been involved in various capacities in the PGY2 psychiatric pharmacy residency training program there. He is also a behavioral sciences consultant for the RI INBRE program. He is an active member of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists (CPNP) and has served this organization in various capacities over the years. While Dr. Dufresne’s research over the course of his career has including work in the pharmacotherapy of affective disorders and schizophrenia, much of his later work involves studying the effects of atypical antipsychotics on metabolic disorders and he has published extensively in the area of antipsychotic induced dyslipidemia.