Expert: Resiliency

Carol D. Ryff, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute on Aging and Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the MacArthur Research Network for Successful Midlife Development, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 20 - Adult Development and Aging) and the Gerontological Society of America, a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and Consulting Editor for two major APA journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychology and Aging). Her work has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the MacArthur Foundation.

Dr. Ryff's research centers on the study of psychological well-being, an area in which she has focussed on the assessment of positive psychological functioning. Her procedures have been translated into 18 different languages and are used in diverse fields and studies - including psychology, sociology, demography, epidemiology, and health.

Beyond her own program of studies, Dr. Ryff has catalyzed extensive multidisciplinary research on topics related to life course development (e.g., parenting; aging transitions; social relations, emotions, and health). Since 1996, she has edited four books that summarize recent findings in these areas.