Megan Gunnar, PhD

Dr. Megan R. Gunnar is a Regents Professor, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and a member of the University of Minnesota’s Distinguished Academy of Teachers. She received her PhD in developmental psychology at Stanford University in 1978, completed a post-doctoral fellowship in psychoneuroendocrinology at Stanford Medical School and then joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1979. Dr. Gunnar has spent her career studying how stress biology affects neurobehavioral development and the processes that help children regulate stress hormones. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Education. She has lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology. She also has mentoring awards from the APS and the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology. To read more about Dr. Gunnar's work, visit her faculty homepage.

Dr. Gunnar will be professor emeritus by the end of May 2026. She plans to continue work to improve the lives of children and families. In retirement she will be working on data collected on recent NIH-supported and foundation-supported grants. She continues her work with the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, serving on their board as well as helping former ICD PhDs Sherryse Corrow and Anna Johnson, now at Bethel, to provide continuous quality improvement research to advance trauma-informed care for the families who use the Nursery for respite care. She will continue her work with Think Small to increase the availability of high quality child care in Minnesota. Finally, she is continuing serving on the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child to translate the science of child development for use by practitioners and policy makers, the Child and Brain Development Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and on the scientific advisory committee for the Stanford University-based RAPID-EC. Contact Bonny Donzella at donzella@umn.edu with questions related to Gunnar Lab current or past research projects, as well as protocol, biological sample, and data collection consultations.