Richie Poulton

Richie Graham Poulton (born 1962) is a New Zealand psychologist and the director of the University of Otago's Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Research Unit, which runs the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (also known as the Dunedin Study). He is also a professor of psychology at the University of Otago and the co-director of the National Centre for Lifecourse Research.
Poulton received his master's degree in science and his postgraduate diploma in clinical psychology from the University of Otago. In 1985–86, he worked as a research assistant on the Dunedin Study, helping Terrie Moffitt assess 13-year-old study participants. In 1995, he received his Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He became director of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development Research Unit of the University of Otago in 2000, and was awarded a personal chair in the School of Medicine there in 2006. He founded the National Centre for Lifecourse Research in 2007, and has been its co-director since then. He also founded the Graduate Longitudinal Study, New Zealand in 2011. In 2015, he was appointed chief science adviser of the Ministry of Social Development in the New Zealand government.
Awards.
In 2004, Poulton received the New Zealand Association of Scientists' Research Medal and the Health Research Council of New Zealand's Liley Medal for Excellence in Health Research. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2010, and was named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to science and health research, in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours. He was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. In 2019, he received the University of Otago's Distinguished Research Medal.
Poulton is married to clinical psychologist Sandhya Ramrakha, with whom he has a daughter, Priyanka Poulton.