Dr. Judson Chandler received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1980 from Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. He subsequently conducted his graduate training at the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked under the mentorship of Dr. Steven Leslie in the Department of Pharmacology. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1988, he conducted his post-doctoral training at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida under the mentorship of Dr. Fulton Crews. He held his first faculty position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Louisiana from 1994. In 1999, he moved to the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston where is currently a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience.

Dr. Chandler has maintained a well-funded research program that has primarily focused on the neuroplasticity of drug and alcohol addiction. In the early stages of his career, he conducted pioneering studies demonstrating that NMDA receptors are important target sites of ethanol in the brain and that chronic alcohol-induced alterations in brain structure and function involves engagement of glutamatergic based homeostatic plasticity and associated cellular mechanisms of learning and memory. Current studies in his laboratory include investigation of chronic ethanol-induced alterations in behavioral control and the cognitive function of the prefrontal cortex. He has served on numerous NIH grant review studies sections and advisory boards and 2017 was recognized by MUSC for his outstanding history of training and mentoring young scientist in research.