Bio
Laura L. Carstensen is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University where she is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. For more than twenty-five years her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging and during that period she was honored with two MERIT awards. Her most current empirical research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing. Dr. Carstensen is a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and the Gerontological Society of America. She was a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society and served on the National Advisory Council on Aging to National Institute on Aging. Carstensen has won numerous awards, including the Kleemeier Award, The Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Research and the Distinguished Mentorship Award from the Gerontological Society of America, as well as the Master Mentor Award from the American Psychological Association. She was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow in 2003 and in 2016 was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. In 2011, she authored A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. Carstensen received her B.S. from the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
