Prof K. Michael Cummings

Professor, Department Psychiatry & Behavioural Sciences

Medical University of South Carolina

Biography

Dr. Cummings is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and member of the Hollings Cancer Center’s Cancer Control Program where he co-leads the tobacco control research program. He is widely recognized for his research on smoking behavior, product marketing, consumer risk perceptions, and the influence of cigarette design on smoking behavior. Dr. Cummings is one of the co-founders of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) which has focused on comparing between country differences in tobacco product regulations and how these policies influence the smoking behaviors of adults and teens. He has published more than 650 peer-reviewed scientific papers, contributed to multiple US Surgeon General Reports on Smoking and Health. He has served as an expert witness in litigation against cigarette manufacturers over 200 cases dating back to the mid-1990s. Over the past decade, Dr. Cummings has focused his efforts on ways to improve the delivery of smoking cessation treatments to patients in health care settings and more broadly on establishing a tobacco and nicotine products regulatory framework based on relative risks that incentivize manufacturers to move away from selling addictive and deadly combustible tobacco products.