Since starting at ARG in 1990, Dr. Kaskutas' overarching professional interest has been to find solutions to alcohol-related problems that do not require professionally-trained individuals for implementation. For example, she has conducted two NIH-funded clinical trials that compared the costs and outcomes of clinical and social model treatment programs. Currently, she is studying the long-term Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) "careers" of treated and untreated substance abusers and how their AA careers relate to abstinence. She also has developed a group-oriented, manual-guided intervention program designed to increase patient involvement with members of AA, now being trialed with NIAAA funding.

In addition to regularly publishing peer-reviewed journal articles of studies funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Kaskutas supervises training of the field's future leaders. An adjunct associate professor at U.C. Berkeley's School of Public Health, she teaches the department's core survey research methods course and co-instructs the longstanding Advanced Alcohol Research Seminar. As ARG's director of training, she also serves as the principal investigator of the NIAAA-funded training grant Graduate Research Training on Alcohol Problems.

At last year's American Society of Addiction Medicine Medical Scientific Conference, the society honored Dr. Kaskutas with the 2007 R. Brinkley Smithers Distinguished Scientist Award for her contributions to the field of addiction medicine. Dr. Kaskutas also received the Research Society on Alcoholism's Young Investigator Award in 1998.

Dr. Kaskutas holds a doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her two dachshunds and worked as a volunteer for Emergency Animal Rescue Service following the Maryville floods.