Dr. Eric D. Wish received his Ph.D. in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. He subsequently completed a NIDA post-doctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine. Between 1986 and 1990, Dr. Wish served as a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice in the Department of Justice, where he supervised the development and launching of the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF, later ADAM) program.
 
In 2013, Dr. Wish developed the Community Drug Early Warning System (CDEWS), an innovative system for detecting emerging drugs by expanded testing of urine specimens obtained from criminal justice drug testing programs and public health programs. In 2014, Dr. Wish received a 6 year award from NIH/NIDA and established the Coordinating Center for the National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS). Currently, Dr. Wish is leading the launch and expansion of the Emergency Department Drug Surveillance (EDDS) system which combines the analysis of hospital EHR data and expanded urine testing to track changes in local drug trends. Dr. Wish has published numerous articles and spoken widely about such issues as synthetic cannabinoids and other new psychoactive substances, recent increases in heroin and fentanyl use, the identification of drug use in offenders, relapse to heroin use by Vietnam veterans, and the validity of self-reports of drug use.
 
From 1990 through 2022, Dr. Wish was Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR), now renamed the Center for Substance Use, Addiction & Health Research, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Wish is also a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.