Meet the Team

The CDPRG research, outreach and management team are guided in our projects and objectives by the expert opinions of our Policy Council, whose wide range of specialisms include policy-making, law enforcement, medicine, pharmacology, psychiatry, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and drug-related harm reduction.

Tarsilo OnuluK FRSA

Managing Director

Tarsilo founded CDPRG alongside Chairman Crispin Blunt MP in 2018. He has been at the forefront of shaping and developing our organisation ever since.

With over 8 years of experience in policy and politics, Tarsilo has a deep understanding of the political field and extensive knowledge of Parliamentary operations. He has worked for a number of UK Members of Parliament both locally and in Westminster and has regularly delivered training courses for Parliamentary staff. He also brings prior experience working for the Home Office across Latin America. Tarsilo is an experienced and passionate campaigner, having led campaigning efforts in policy areas including education, local government and LGBT+ rights. He stood as a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate in the 2019 General Election.

Having been personally affected by the drug misuse of others, Tarsilo advocates for evidence based drug policy reform to reduce the harm to society caused by drugs and to enable the development of new medicines for patients. He was a key policy figure during Parliament’s decision to reschedule medicinal cannabis for prescription and now for the rescheduling of psilocybin for the development of new mental health treatments. He is a leader of the Secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Drug Policy Reform and the APPG on CBD Products.

Tarsilo holds an MA in Leadership, a first class undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Bath and was awarded the ‘Brilliance in Spain’ scholarship for the best in-country A-Level results. He is a former Chair of Governors for a Secondary Academy in Leeds and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Tarsilo took over as Managing Director from former UK Minister Rob Wilson in 2020.

Timmy Davis

Psilocybin Rescheduling Project Manager

As the Psilocybin Rescheduling Project manager Timmy Davis’ primary duty is collating and presenting the evidence for a change in psilocybin’s classification as a Schedule 1 substance under the Misuse of Drugs Regulation 2001. Timmy uses the case of psilocybin as indicative of a wider need for reassessment of the status of many other Schedule 1 substances, such as MDMA. Timmy also contributes to research on routes of access to medical cannabis.
 Timmy is training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Timmy is a guide on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London, as well as a welfare and harm reduction manager at music festivals in the UK and abroad. Timmy speaks and writes on psychedelics from a psychoanalytic perspective. Having graduated from Birkbeck College with an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and with a BA Hons in Philosophy and Religion from the university of Kent, where he was president of the psychedelic society for three years, he is preparing to begin PhD research in this area.

David King

Consultant

Dave is a graduate medical student at King's College London and senior researcher at the CDPRG. He completed his undergraduate degree in Medical Anthropology (BSc) in 2011 with a research thesis on beliefs and attitudes to health, illness and medicine among cannabis-using populations. Subsequently, Dave worked as a researcher at the Beckley Foundation (2011) and in immunology at the National University of Singapore (2012 - 13). 

He is a founder of Breaking Convention, Europe's largest academic conference on psychedelic drug research, and was a founding director of the Breaking Convention charity from 2010 - 2019. He is the co-editor of four books, all distributed by MIT Press, and has published a number of academic book chapters, scientific papers, white papers, open letters, and literary pieces. Co-authored CDPRG white papers include 'The UK Review of Medicinal Cannabis: The Needs of a Nation' (2020) and 'The Medicinal Use of Psilocybin: A call for reform' (in press, jointly produced by the Adam Smith Institute). 

As the director of over a dozen conferences and lecture series, Dave has been jointly responsible for organising more than a thousand public lectures, primarily on drug science, and has presented his own work at conferences in five countries. He was the founding President of both the award-winning Psychedelics Society at the University of Kent (2008) and the Society for Psychedelic Studies at King's College London (2015). Under the joint auspices of the latter and the Maudsley Psychedelic Society, he co-directed a live-streamed events programme at the Institute for Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience in Drug-Assisted Psychotherapies from 2016 - 2018, which attracted more than 20,000 live online viewers at its peak.

Alex PIOT

Director of Research

Alex trained as a neuropsychopharmacologist with an interest in the use of controlled substances for the treatment of mental health disorders, harm reduction, and implementation of evidence-based policy practices. His interest in this field began when he investigated the interaction of ovarian hormones and ketamine in the treatment of depression. Alex then conducted research on the synaptic correlates of benzodiazepine tolerance and changes in brain morphology following repeated ayahuasca use.  

He studied Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Clinical Neuroscience at UCL before joining the CDPRG in December 2022.

Sam Lawes

Outreach & Communications Manager

Sam Lawes joined the CDPRG in November 2022 with a background in early years policy, trauma-informed practice and patient voice work. Much of his expertise comes from four years he spent at early years charity WAVE Trust. Here, he co-created a new trauma-informed training programme based on the latest global research, gained expertise in pathways to disadvantage and saw the overwhelming evidence for a public health approach to (among other things) drugs policy.

He also saw how the paucity of mental health support available in our country feeds directly into vulnerable people seeking self-medication by other means, including misuse of alcohol and other drugs. He is currently in training towards accreditation as a psychotherapist.

Tara Austin

Campaign Consultant

Tara is Campaign Consultant for the CDPRG campaign for psilocybin access rights (PAR) and is responsible for the strategy and execution of that campaign. Tara began her career as a strategist in advertising agencies and has worked with many of the world’s biggest brands from Unilever and Coca-Cola to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Then, ten years ago, she began to specialise in applied behavioural science and led the inaugural experiment for the newly formed Ogilvy Behavioural Science Practice, where she is now a Partner and creates integrated behaviour change campaigns for clients such as HM Government, Recycle for London and Public Health England. Tara is also host of Nudgestock, the world’s biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity.