Biography

Terrie Moffitt studies how genetic and environmental risks work together to shape the course of abnormal human behaviors and psychiatric disorders. Her particular interest is in antisocial and criminal behavior, but she also studies depression, psychosis, and addiction. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, who completed her clinical hospital training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (1984). 

Dr. Moffitt is associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows 1000 people born in 1972 in New Zealand. As of 2010, she has studied the cohort from birth to age 38 so far. She also directs the Environmental-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, which follows 1100 British families with twins born in 1994-1995. She has studied the twins from birth to age 12 so far.

For her research, Dr. Moffitt has received the American Psychological Association's Early Career Contribution Award (1993) and Distinguished Career Award in Clinical Child Psychology (2006). Dr. Moffitt was also awarded a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award (2002-2007), the Klaus-Grawe Prize (2009), and was co-recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology (2007). She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), the American Society of Criminology (2003), the British Academy (2004), Academia Europaea (2005), and the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2008). She has served on investigative panels for institutions such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (ethics of behavioural genetics research) and the US National Academy of Sciences (research into firearms and drug markets). Currently, Dr. Moffitt is a member of the working party to draft diagnostic criteria for disruptive disorders and ADHD for the DSM-V, forthcoming from the American Psychiatric Association in 2012. 

Dr. Moffitt works at Duke University in the USA, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London in the UK, and at the Dunedin School of Medicine, in New Zealand.