Charles S. Grob, MD is a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, and is Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is also a founding board member and Director of Clinical Research for The Heffter Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the scientific study of psychedelics. Grob has held a long-standing interest in altered mind states and the healing power that they may have. He conducted the first FDA-approved study giving MDMA to human subjects. He led an international team of experts looking into the long-term effects of ayahuasca use by Brazilian members of the União do Vegetal church, finding beneficial effects on those with substance addiction problems. The team also found that platelet serotonin uptake sites increased in those who drank ayahuasca, which may have implications related to potential antidepressant effects of this visionary brew. With Dennis McKenna and Jace Callaway, Grob co-authored a review of the scientific research on ayahuasca. Following his work with ayahuasca, Grob conducted the first successful study looking into the use of psilocybin to treat the anxiety associated with end-stage cancer; his work has inspired further study into this area by researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and New York University.

Grob is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader (featuring contributions by Andrew Weil, Terence McKenna, Jeremy Narby, Ralph Metzner, Rick Strassman, and others), and co-editor (with Roger Walsh) of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics (featuring interviews with Ram Dass, Betty Eisner, James Fadiman, Gary Fisher, Peter T. Furst, Stanislav Grof, Michael Harner, Albert Hofmann, Laura Archera Huxley, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Alexander T. Shulgin, Ann Shulgin, Huston Smith, and Myron Stolaroff).