Nilam Ram, Ph.D., is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University where he teaches Multivariate Strategies for Data Analysis in Developmental Research, Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis, and Research Methods in Developmental Processes. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Virginia working with John Nesselroade and Jack McArdle. He serves on the editorial boards for the International Journal of Behavioral Development, Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, Psychology and Aging, and Research in Human Development and has served as a guest Editor for Research in Human Development and Psychology and Aging. He is an elected member of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology.
Nilam’s current research interests have grown out of a history of studying change. After his undergraduate study of economics he worked as a currency trader. There he studied the movement of world markets as they jerked up, down, and sideways. Later he moved on to the study of human movement, kinesiology, and eventually psychological processes – with a specialization in longitudinal research methodology at the University of Virginia. Generally, Nilam studies how short-term changes (e.g., processes such as learning, information processing, etc.) develop over the course of the lifespan and how intraindividual change and variability study designs (e.g., measurement bursts) might contribute to our knowledge base. Current projects include examinations of: age differences in short-term dynamics at the cognitive/affective/ temperament interface; cyclic patterns in the day-to-day progression of emotions; and change in cognition and well-being over the lifespan, particularly in the oldest old. Methodologically, Nilam is working to develop a variety of multi-person extensions of intraindividual analytic methods and investigating how to maintain a focus on the individual while still tackling issues of aggregation and generalizability. He is the authors of more than 110 articles and chapters and is an author of Growth Modeling: Structural Equation and Multilevel Modeling Approaches, which will be published by Guilford Press in 2017.