Natasha Duell is an assistant professor of psychology and child development at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where she leads the Adolescent Decisions And Positive Trajectories (ADAPT) Lab. Prior, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2021-2023 she was a National Science Foundation (SBE) postdoctoral fellow. From 2018-2021 Natasha was an NIH T32 postdoctoral fellow at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (formerly Center for Developmental Science). She received her PhD in psychology from Temple University in 2018 with the mentorship of Dr. Laurence Steinberg and her BA in psychology and social behavior from the University of California, Irvine in 2011.

Broadly, Natasha’s research takes a strengths-based approach to identifying contexts and individual characteristics that facilitate adaptive decision-making among youth through three lines of inquiry: (1) positive risk taking, (2) social and biological influences on decision-making, and (3) cross-national comparisons of behavior. She has developed a self-report scale of positive risk taking that is being administered and validated in samples of youth across the world.

To answer her research questions, Natasha uses advanced statistical modeling and methods including  experimental tasks, ecological momentary assessments, fMRI, and hormone samples. As a scholar, she is committed to cultivating an equitable and inclusive academic environment and to ethical and transparent scientific practices.