June 2025 Newsletter
June 2025 Newsletter
Faculty Profile
Daniel Mroczek, PhD, is professor and chief of Determinants of Health in the Department of Medical Social Sciences and is also a professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on how behavioral and psychological characteristics can predict physical health, cognitive aging, dementia and mortality risk.
What are your research interests?
My research focuses on how behavioral and psychological characteristics (such as personality traits) predict physical health, cognitive aging, dementia and mortality risk. I also have several statistical interests, in particular mixed effects (multilevel) modeling, survival analysis, longitudinal modeling, secondary and archival data analysis and coordinated (multi-study) data analysis.
What is the ultimate goal of your research?
To understand how behavioral and psychological factors influence physical health, longevity and dementia risk. Many diseases are preventable through better health behaviors and certain psychological characteristics can increase the likelihood of healthy behaviors thereby reducing health risks. Better understanding of those psychological characteristics can promote better health.
How did you become interested in this area of research?
When I was in graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was primarily interested in aging, lifespan psychological development and personality traits, as well as statistics and quantitative methods. However, in my last two years of graduate school, I became interested in how these factors, such as personality traits, can shape health especially as we grow older.
What types of collaborations are you engaged in across campus (and beyond)?
I am jointly appointed to both Feinberg and Weinberg, so I have many cross-campus collaborations. I also collaborate extensively with many scholars outside of Northwestern, both nationally and internationally. These are typically multi-study coordinated analyses that bring together many different datasets to answer a given research question.
Where have you recently published papers?
I have recently published papers in JAMA Oncology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Journals of Gerontology, Psychology and Aging and Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Who inspires you? Or, who are your mentors?
Most of my mentors have retired! However, certain historic scientists who have written eloquently about science and medicine continue to inspire me: J.B.S. Haldane, Leo Szilard and Lewis Thomas.
