Overview
Terrie E. Moffitt, Ph.D., is the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology at Duke University, and Professor of Social Development at King’s College London. Her expertise is in the areas of longitudinal methods, developmental theory, mental disorders and antisocial behaviors, neuropsychology, and genomics in behavioral science. She is currently uncovering the consequences of a lifetime of mental and behavioral disorder on processes of aging. She is the Associate Director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also co-founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in the UK. Dr. Moffitt also is a licensed clinical psychologist, with specialization in neuropsychological assessment. She collaborates with criminologists, economists, geneticists, epidemiologists, sociologists, demographers, gerontologists, statisticians, neuroscientists, medical scientists, opthalmologists, and dentists. Dr. Moffitt is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , as well as the British Academy, Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), Academia Europa, Association of Psychological Science, and the American Society of Criminology. She holds honorary doctorates from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and Universitat Basel, Switzerland. For her research, Dr. Moffitt has received both the American Psychological Association's Early Career Contribution Award and Distinguished Career Award. Dr. Moffitt was also awarded a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award, the Klaus-Grawe Prize, and was a recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, NARSAD Ruane Prize, the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize, and in 2022 the Grawemeyer Prize. Her service includes serving as chair of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Science at NASEM, Chair of the NIA Data Monitoring Committee for the Health and Retirement Study, and Chair of the Jury for the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize in Switzerland. Dr. Moffitt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her undergraduate degree in psychology. She continued her training in psychology at the University of Southern California, receiving an M.A. in experimental animal behavior, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She also completed postdoctoral training in geriatrics and neuropsychology at the University of California Los Angeles Neuropsychiatric Institute. In her spare time, she works on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
DunedinPACNI estimates the longitudinal Pace of Aging from a single brain image to track health and disease.
Journal Article Nature aging · July 2025 To understand how aging affects functional decline and increases disease risk, it is necessary to develop measures of how fast a person is aging. Using data from the Dunedin Study, we introduce an accurate and reliable measure for the rate of longitudinal ... Full text CiteAccelerated Epigenetic Aging and Prospective Morbidity and Mortality Among U.S. Veterans.
Journal Article J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci · June 10, 2025 BACKGROUND: Epigenetic aging measures have promise as surrogate health outcomes in randomized control trials and observational cohort studies. The value of these measures, however, will reflect the extent to which they are associated with prospective healt ... Full text Link to item CiteCaries Trajectories From Childhood to Adulthood Associated With Mental Disorders in Midlife.
Journal Article Journal of public health dentistry · June 2025 Oral and mental health are integral to overall health and well-being. Primary dentition caries is associated with poorer oral and general health and faster aging by midlife, but it remains unclear whether these associations also hold for mental health. ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Duke-NCCU Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Training Program in Child Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Conditions Program (DN-IPT)
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEPreceptor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2024 - 2029Duke University Program in Environmental Health
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2019 - 2029Duke University Psychiatry Physician-Scientist Residency Training Program
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health · 2024 - 2029View All Grants