Meet the Team

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD

Founder and Executive Director

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD is an Associate Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where she directs the Epidemiology, Policy, and Implementation Lab (EPI Lab). She founded Drug Checking Los Angeles in 2022 to gain timely, actionable insight into the illicit drug supply. Dr. Shover completed her PhD in epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. Alongside her academic research, Dr. Shover has worked in local government, community clinics, and policy advising capacities, all of which inform her team's approach to urgent and complex public health problems.

Her research has been published in top academic journals including Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and The International Journal of Drug Policy. Her lab's work is currently funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. She regularly presents insights from drug checking in academic and community settings around the world. Dr. Shover's approach to drug checking as a population health strategy has been honored with the Helping End Addiction Long-term Initiative Director's Trailblazer Award in 2023 and a Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Community Partner Values Award in 2025. As an educator, Dr. Shover is especially committed to mentoring trainees from backgrounds underrepresented in science, including people with personal experience of substance use disorders and mental illness.

Adam Koncsol, MPA

Graduate Student Researcher

Adam is a PhD candidate in Health Policy and Management with a concentration in Population Health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. His research examines drug-market trends and overdose-prevention policy at the population level, including the characterization of illicit drug markets. Adam joined the EPI Lab as a Graduate Student Researcher through the David Geffen School of Medicine's Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, combining community-based drug checking with data analysis on drug market surveillance in Los Angeles. His work has produced conference presentations and academic publications on shifting fentanyl concentration and adulteration, methamphetamine purity, and the health risks associated with tar and powder heroin.

Caitlin Molina, BS, BA

Project Director

Morgan Godvin, BA

Research Associate

Morgan Godvin is a researcher and drug policy expert with deep lived experience, having survived opioid addiction and several years of federal incarceration before entering public health. In Oregon, she served on multiple state commissions overseeing substance use policy and grantmaking. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, she has lived, worked, and studied across the Global South, including collaborative research in Portugal with the European Union Drugs Agency. Her work focuses on fentanyl, overdose, medications for opioid use disorder, and elevating the perspectives of people who use drugs. She has been a Research Associate with the EPI Lab since April 2024.