Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and she directs the National Center for Children and Families (www.policyforchildren.org).

She is interested in factors that contribute to both positive and negative outcomes across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, with a particular focus on key social and biological transitions over the life course. She designs and evaluates intervention programs for children and parents (Early Head Start, Infant Health and Development Program, Head Start Quality Program). Other large-scale longitudinal studies include the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study and the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (co-PI of both). Brooks-Gunn is the author of 4 books and more than 350 publications. She has been elected into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and she has received life-time achievement awards from the Society for Research in Child Development, American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association and Society for Research on Adolescence.

Brooks-Gunn received her B.A. from Connecticut College, her M.Ed from  Harvard University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.