Generate a tailored SOP for Dr. Leah Somerville. Improve your application with a focused, well-structured draft.
Leah Somerville is the Grafstein Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where she has been a faculty member since 2012. She completed her PhD in Psychological Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College and subsequently underwent postdoctoral training at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Somerville directs the Affective Neuroscience & Development Laboratory, where her research focuses on adolescent brain development, emotion, motivation, self-regulation, and decision making. She employs psychological neuroscientific approaches to investigate how brain development during adolescence shapes cognitive, motivational, social, and emotional behaviors. Her work aims to inform mechanisms underlying health risk behaviors that emerge during this critical period. Somerville's research is currently supported by prestigious grants, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. She has received several early career awards, including the FJ McGuigan Early Career Research Prize for her contributions to understanding the human mind, the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for transformative early career contributions, and the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award.
Harvard University • Cambridge, MA
A faculty member conducting research and teaching in the Department of Psychology.
Administered by the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).