Current Director
Robert A. Hummer, PhD
Dr. Robert A. Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Fellow of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Hummer recently served as the 2021 President of the Population Association of America (PAA), the 84th president in the history of the organization. Dr. Hummer’s research program is focused on the accurate description and more complete understanding of population health patterns and trends in the United States. He is currently serving as Director of the long-running National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which is funded by the National Institute on Aging and five co-funding institutes/offices (NICHD, NIMHD, NIDA, OBSSR, ODP). Now in its sixth wave, Add Health is one of the most innovative and well-utilized nationally representative cohort studies of Americans ever undertaken. Over his career to date, Dr. Hummer has published more than 150 journal articles and book chapters in his areas of interest, with attention to health disparities both during infancy/childhood as well as across the adult life course. He is also the recent co-author of Population Health in America (University of California Press, 2019, with Erin R. Hamilton).
Co-Director
Lauren Gaydosh, PhD
Dr. Lauren Gaydosh is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Fellow in the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her PhD in Sociology, Demography, and Social Policy from Princeton University. Following her graduate studies, she was awarded an NICHD Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award for postdoctoral training in biodemography. Before joining UNC in 2024, Dr. Gaydosh was an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on understanding the role of early life environments in shaping health across the life course. This work integrates social, contextual, and biological data from population-based longitudinal studies to examine how social inequalities generate health disparities. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the US Fulbright Program, and the Arnold Ventures Foundation. She serves as a Deputy Editor for Demography and on the editorial board for the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. She was recently awarded the 2025 Millbank Quarterly IAPHS Early Career Award. Dr. Gaydosh is currently serving as Co-Director of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health).
Deputy Director
Allison E. Aiello, PhD
Dr. Allison Aiello is the James S. Jackson Healthy Longevity Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. Dr. Aiello received her PhD in Epidemiology from Columbia University with distinction and was awarded the Anna C. Gelman Award for outstanding achievement and promise in the field of Epidemiology. Following her graduate studies, she joined the University of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar and two years later, was promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, where she launched her independent academic career and held the John G. Searle Assistant Professorship of Public Health. In 2014, Dr. Aiello moved to the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to lead the Social Epidemiology Program. During this time, Dr. Aiello was elected as Fellow of the Carolina Population Center and was appointed Adjunct Professor of Social Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. In 2022, Dr. Aiello was recruited to Columbia University to develop and lead a new program Biosocial Aging and Health Equity in the Columbia Aging Center at the Mailman School of Public Health at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Aiello currently serves as the Deputy Director of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) Wave VI.
Co-Deputy Director
Eric A. Whitsel, MD, MPH
Eric A. Whitsel MD, MPH is a Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (UNC). He has decades of experience as a National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study (ARIC), and Hispanic Communities Health Study / Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) Investigator. His experience includes that as PI of the Add Health Wave IV Biology Core, Wave V Biology Project, and Wave VI Exposome Supplement (2006-2026); UNC PI of the WHI Southeast Regional Center (2010-2027); Chair of the WHI Built and Natural Environment Scientific Interest Group (2010-2026); and former Chair of the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Environmental Working Group (2021-2023). His experience also includes that as WHI, ARIC, and HCHS/SOL ancillary study PI continuously funded by the NIEHS, NHLBI, NIA, and FAA for 20+ years; author of 271 peer-reviewed journal articles generally positioned at the intersection of cardiovascular, environmental, and genetic epidemiology; leader of studies examining epigenetic mechanisms of particulate-mediated cardiovascular disease risk and the somatic genomic pathogenesis of radon-related stroke; and senior member of Add Health, WHI, and ARIC morbidity and mortality classification, outcomes adjudication, and ancillary study committees. In environmental epidemiology, his work is notable for co-authorship of the 2009 and 2016 U.S. EPA / NCEA Integrated Science Assessments for Particulate Matter, as well as direction in establishing the accuracy and reliability of the geocodes, electrocardiographic measures, pollution metrics, other contextual attributes, and ‘omics data for studies ancillary to the above cohorts.
Former Director
Kathleen Mullan Harris, PhD
Dr. Harris served as the Director of Add Health from 2004 to 2021; she is the current Director of the Add Health Parent Study. Dr. Harris is the James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on social inequality and health with special attention to public policies designed to reduce health risks in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Harris transformed Add Health into a landmark study, funded by 24 NIH institutes and agencies, in which she integrated biological and genomic data with social and behavioral data for the scientific study of developmental and health trajectories across the early life course. She launched the Add Health Parent Study to understand how health and well-being are transmitted across generations.
For her leadership on Add Health, she was awarded the Golden Goose Award from the US Congress for major breakthroughs in medicine, social behavior, and technological research and the Irene Taeuber Award from the Population Association of America in recognition of original and important contributions to the scientific study of population. Dr. Harris is past president of the Population Association of America, past president of the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Science, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received her PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania.
Former Director
J. Richard Udry, PhD
J. Richard Udry was an esteemed population studies scholar and Carolina Population Center’s Director from 1977 – 1992. Dr. Udry joined the UNC faculty as Associate Professor of Maternal and Child Health and Sociology in 1965. He became CPC Director in 1977, where he changed the structure and purpose of the Carolina Population Center and, today, it still closely resembles that structure and purpose. He also created the Faculty Fellows program, an elected group of UNC faculty members who choose to conduct population research at CPC. Dr. Udry is perhaps best known for creating the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a longitudinal study of U.S. adolescents that started in 1994. It was built on the American Teenage Study which started in the 1980s and ended in 1991. Add Health is still a Carolina Population Center project and the data is used by thousands of researchers worldwide in a wide range of disciplines including sociology, psychology, criminology, education, economics, biostatistics, epidemiology, medicine, genetics, maternal and child health, nutrition, aging, environmental science and geography, among others. Dr. Udry passed away on July 29, 2012.