Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. Dr. Steinberg taught previously at Cornell University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was educated at Vassar College and at Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in 1977. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, has been a Faculty Scholar of the William T. Grant Foundation, and was Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Dr. Steinberg is Past-President of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association and a former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence. He has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the John P. Hill Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Adolescence, the American Psychological Association Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society, the Society for Adolescent Medicine's Gallagher Lectureship, the American Psychological Association Presidential Citation, and the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. In 2009, he was named the first recipient of the Klaus Jacobs Research Prize, one of the largest prizes ever awarded to a social scientist.
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. He served as a member of the National Academies’ Panel on the Health Implications of Child Labor; Committee on the Science of Adolescent Health and Development; and Board on Children, Youth, and Families, and currently chairs the Committee on the Science of Adolescence. Steinberg is the author of more than 300 articles and essays on growth and development during the teenage years, and the author or editor of eleven books, including Adolescence; When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment (with Ellen Greenberger); You and Your Adolescent: The Essential Guide for Ages 10 to 25; Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis (with Wendy Steinberg); Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do (with Bradford Brown and Sanford Dornbusch); Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Issues (co-edited with Vonnie McLoyd); the Handbook of Adolescent Psychology (co-edited with Richard Lerner); Rethinking Juvenile Justice (with Elizabeth Scott), and The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting. Steinberg has also has written for many popular outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.