Suniya S. Luthar, Ph.D.

Professor, Clinical and Developmental Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University sl504@columbia.edu

Suniya S. Luthar, Professor of Developmental and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1990. Dr. Luthar's research involves vulnerability and resilience among various populations including youth in poverty and children in families affected by mental illness. Her recent work has focused on children in affluent communities, and her findings on problems among these youth -- particularly pertaining to substance use and anxiety -- have received much attention in the scientific community, parents and school administrators, as well as the national media. Luthar is currently working on a large internet-based study on women's feelings and experiences as mothers, with a focus on understanding mothers as people and not simply in their role as parents.

In addition to numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, Dr. Luthar's books include Children in Poverty: Risk and Protective Forces in Adjustment, Developmental Psychopathology: Perspectives on Adjustment, Risk, and Disorder, and most recently, Resilience and Vulnerability in Childhood: Adaptation in the Context of Adversities. Dr. Luthar is Associate Editor of the prestigious peer-reviewed journals Developmental Psychology and Development and Psychopathology and has served as Chair of a grant review committee at the National Institutes of Health. She has received several awards for her contributions to science, including a Dissertation Award, and the Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award, both from the American Psychological Association, a Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, and an American Mensa Education and Research Foundation Award for Excellence in Research on Intelligence.

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