Dary Fiorentino is a Research Psychologist. His professional interests are grouped in three broad categories: conducting research, teaching, and providing expert testimony in legal cases.
His research areas include 1) standardized field sobriety tests, 2) alcohol pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, 3) cultural differences in drinking and drinking and driving, and 4) fitness-for-duty and workplace alcohol and drug testing.
He is the author of several published articles and reports. He is the developer of the seated battery of sobriety tests that has been adopted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators to aid law enforcement officers detect boaters with impairment caused by blood alcohol concentrations of .08% and above. He helped develop The Virtual Bar, an internet application aimed at educating college students on how different factors—including age, gender, height, weight, and food—affect blood alcohol concentration.
He teaches classes in research methods and statistics. He particularly enjoys teaching topics in multiple regression, moderation and mediation, and structural equation modeling. Dr. Fiorentino has a profound belief in the usefulness of the scientific method to explore human issues, and that psychologists are uniquely equipped to study and positively affect many aspects of the human experience, provided they have the methodological and analytical skills to do so. He takes pride in providing some of those skills to his students.
Dr. Fiorentino provides expert testimony in legal cases in which alcohol and/or some drugs are suspected to have contributed to one or more adverse events. His testimony usually focuses on the relationships between alcohol dose and blood alcohol concentration (BAC), BAC and driving impairment, and driving impairment and crash risk.
He earned a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Human Factors, both from California State University Northridge, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University.