Nicholas P. Lovrich enjoys the rank of Regents Professor Emeritus in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs and the honor of holding a Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson Distinguished Professorship in Political Science at WSU.  He is currently on partial appointment as a research affiliate in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, serving as a Co-PI on a 3-year grant from the National Institute of Justice to document the impact of marijuana legalization on police and crime in Washington.  He is the author/co-author/co-editor of 13 books, 175 peer-reviewed articles, and over 20 edited book chapters.  He chaired 30 PhD dissertation committees at WSU.

Since 2010 he has been working with Herb Hill and Brian Clowers in the WSU Department of Chemistry to develop a means of rapid field detection of THC by means of the application of ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) in law enforcement and workplace safety settings.  The WSU team has been coordinating efforts with Michael Milburn (UMass, Boston) for the past two years to collect data simultaneously on THC exposure and cognitive/motor skills driving impairment.