Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.

Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading experts on adolescence, is a Distinguished University Professor and the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. He taught previously at Cornell University, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prof. Steinberg is the author of more than 450 articles and essays on development during the teenage years, and the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books. He has been a featured guest on numerous television programs, including CBS Morning News, Today, Good Morning America, 20/20, Dateline, PBS News Hour, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, and is a frequent consultant on adolescence for print and electronic media, including The New York Times and NPR. He has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Slate, and Psychology Today. A graduate of Vassar College and Cornell University, Prof. Steinberg is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.

Prof. Steinberg is a former President of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association and of the Society for Research on Adolescence. He has been the recipient of numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research on Adolescence. In 2009, he was named the first recipient of the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for Productive Youth Development, one of the largest prizes ever awarded to a social scientist. In 2014 he received the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award, a national teaching prize, for having inspired his former students to make a significant contribution to society.

A nationally and internationally renowned expert on psychological development during adolescence, Prof. Steinberg’s research has focused on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-making, parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent employment, high school reform, and juvenile justice.

Prof. Steinberg served as a member of the National Academies’ Panel on the Health Implications of Child Labor and the Board on Children, Youth, and Families and chaired the National Academies’ Committee on the Science of Adolescence.  He has been a frequent consultant to state and federal agencies and lawmakers on child labor, secondary education, and juvenile justice policy and was the lead scientist on the amicus curiae briefs filed by the American Psychological Association in Roper v. Simmons, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that abolished the juvenile death penalty, as well as several subsequent Supreme Court cases that placed limits on the use of life without parole as a sentence for juveniles. He has also provided expert testimony and consultation in a number of legal cases involving adolescent brain and behavioral development.