Terrie E. Moffitt studies how genetic and environmental risks work together to shape the developmental course of abnormal human behaviors and psychiatric disorders. Her particular interest is in antisocial and criminal behavior, but she also studies depression, psychosis, and substance abuse. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, who completed her clinical hospital training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She is associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows 1000 people born in 1972 in New Zealand 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 from birth to age 18 so far. For her research, she has received the American Psychological Association's Early Career Contribution Award (1993) and Distinguished Career Award in Clinical Child Psychology (2006), the Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award (2002-2007), the Stockholm Prize in Criminology (2007), the Klaus-Grawe Prize in clinical psychology (2009), the NARSAD Ruane Prize (2010) and the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (2010). She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), the American Society of Criminology (2003), the British Academy (2004), the American Psychopathological Association (2005), Academia Europaea (2005), the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2008), the Association for Psychological Science (2009), and King's College London (2010). She has served on investigative panels for institutions such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (ethics of behavioural genetic research) and the US National Academy of Sciences (research into firearms and violence). Moffitt is a member of the working party for childhood disruptive disorders and ADHD for the DSM-V, forthcoming from the American Psychiatric Assn. She is a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. She works at Duke University, in North Carolina 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. Her favorite activities are camping and hiking trips in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific, and working on her farm in North Carolina.

Moffitt received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1977, an M.A. in Experimental Animal Behavior from the University of Sourthern California in 1981, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California in 1984.