Ross Thompson is distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and is director of the Social & Emotional Development Lab. He has served three times as associate editor of Child Development, is immediate Past President of the Board of Directors of Zero to Three (a national nonprofit devoted to the healthy development of young children and their families), and served on the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development (1998-2000) and the Committee on the Science of Children Birth to Age 8 (2013-15) of the National Research Council/Institute of Medicine. He served for many years on the executive committee of the Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis, and on the boards of several national nonprofits. His books include Preventing Child Maltreatment Through Social Support: A Critical Analysis (Sage, 1995), The Postdivorce Family (Sage, 1999), Toward a Child-Centered, Neighborhood-Based Child Protection System (Praeger, 2002), Socioemotional Development (Nebraska Symposium on Motivation; University of Nebraska Press, 1990), and Infant-Mother Attachment (Erlbaum, 1985). His most recent books are Attachment: The Fundamental Questions (Guilford, 2021) and The Brain Development Revolution: Science, the Media, and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Professor Thompson is not currently inviting new students to join his lab group.