Eileen Crimmins, PhD

Eileen Crimmins is the AARP Professor of Gerontology in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a University Professor at USC. She directs the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, one of the Demography of Aging Centers supported by the U.S. National Institute on Aging. She is also director of the Multidisciplinary Training in Gerontology Program and the National Institute of Aging-sponsored Network on Biological Risk.

Crimmins is a co-investigator of the Health and Retirement Study in the U.S. Much of her research has focused on changes over time in health and mortality. She has been instrumental in organizing and promoting the recent integration of the measurement of biological indicators in large population surveys. She recently served as co-chair of a Committee for the National Academy of Sciences to address why life expectancy in the U.S. is falling so far behind that of other countries.

She recently co-edited several books with a focus on international aging, mortality and health expectancy: Determining Health Expectancies; Longer Life and Healthy Aging; Human Longevity, Individual Life Duration, and the Growth of the Oldest-old Population; the International Handbook of Adult Mortality; Explaining Diverging Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries; and International Differences in Mortality at Older Ages: Dimensions and Sources. She has received the Kleemeier Award for Research from the Gerontological Society of America.