Susan Smalley
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Susan Smalley Ph.D. |
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| Born |
Susan Lee Smalley February 18, 1955 Minneapolis, MN |
| Residence | Los Angeles, CA |
| Alma mater |
University of Michigan UCLA |
| Occupation | Behavioral geneticist Writer Activist |
| Organization | Founder, Mindful Awareness Research Center at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior Founding fellow, American College of Medical Genetics International Society of Psychiatric Genetics |
| Notable work | Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness |
| Board member of | Co-chair, Equality Now Founder, Cell-Ed |
| Spouse(s) | Kevin Wall |
Susan Smalley, Ph.D. is a behavioral geneticist, writer, and activist. The founder of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior (MARC), and Professor Emerita, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, Smalley is considered an expert in genetic influences in human behavior, childhood onset conditions of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and the science of well-being. She is the co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness and more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, and is an advocate for gender equality through education and the law as the co-chair of Equality Now and the co-founder of Cell-Ed, an educational platform for underserved adults delivered via mobile phones.
Smalley grew up in Fort Wayne and met her future husband, Kevin Wall, during her first year of high school. She left Fort Wayne at 18 and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Smalley majored in biological anthropology and developed an interest in population genetics and human evolution while an undergraduate. She received a BA in Anthropology in 1976.
Smalley moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and in 1979 began graduate school at UCLA, where she studied biological anthropology with an emphasis on behavior genetics, the study of genetic influences on human behavior. As behavior genetics was an emerging field, Smalley created a program of study consisting of courses in anthropology—population and quantitative genetics—coupled with biology, genetics, and psychology. She received an M.A. in 1981 in Anthropology and in 1985, after completing a dissertation in the genetics of spatial ability, she received a Ph.D. in Anthropology with specialization in population genetics. She remained at UCLA and completed post-doctoral fellowships in medical genetics and childhood psychopathology.
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