The NIDA Avenir award in genetics or epigenetics of substance use disorders.

NIDA's Avenir Program in the Genetics or Epigenetics of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) was launched to support early stage investigators who propose innovative, high risk, but potentially high impact research and who show promise of being tomorrow's leaders in this scientific field. Since 2015, NIDA has supported 30 Avenir Investigators with unique expertise and creative ideas. This special issue showcases how some of these ideas have germinated, flourished, and borne fruit. In this perspective article we briefly describe the purpose and implementation of the Avenir award and provide a high altitude overview of the awardees and their scientific projects to date.