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Biographical Data
Dr. Suzman is the Director of the Behavioral and Social Research
Program (BSR) of the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National
Institutes of Health. He guides a research portfolio covering a
broad range of behavioral and social science at the individual and
societal level, focusing on change during adulthood, interrelationships
between older people and institutions, and the societal impact of
an aging population. BSR is a major funder of research on demography,
economics and psychology. He played a major role in developing fields
such as the demography and economics of aging. He has also been
instrumental in encouraging the development of interdisciplinary
fields such biodemography, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics,
behavior genetics and social neuroscience. Dr. Suzman has played
a leading role in building the research infrastructure for a set
of longitudinal national surveys on aging. Many of these surveys
include measures of health and functioning (including physiological
and cognitive and physical performance measures), genetics, and
economic such as the Health and Retirement Study and a rapidly growing
set of comparable studies worldwide. .
Under his direction BSR has become one of the leading funders of
social and behavioral research in the US and abroad. One indication
of success has been the rapidly increasing numbers of BSR-funded
social and behavioral research articles published in the top general
science and medical journals. Another measure is the increased number
of BSR-funded researchers elected to the NAS and IOM and receiving
top prizes such as the Nobel.
Prior to his appointment as head of the Behavioral and Social Research
Program, Dr. Suzman was Chief of Demography and Population Epidemiology
at NIA, where he developed and directed the program that funds research
and training in demography, epidemiology, and the economics of aging.
He also served as the Director of the Office of the Demography of
Aging, the focal point for demographic statistics and research within
NIA and across other Federal and international agencies.. Dr. Suzman
was the founding Staff Director of the Federal Forum on Aging-Related
Statistics, a coordinating organization made up of over 35 Federal
agencies and initially jointly chaired by the National Center for
Health Statistics, Bureau of the Census, and NIA.
After attending the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa,
Dr. Suzman received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from
Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Diploma of
Social Anthropology from Oxford University in England. He was a
Post Doctoral Fellow at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California,
where he also served briefly on the faculty. He was formerly on
the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco Medical
School. Dr. Suzman has published articles in scientific journals
and has edited several volumes, including The Oldest Old (Oxford
University Press) and Forecasting the Health of Elderly Populations
(Springer Verlag). |