James A. Griffin, Ph.D., is the Deputy Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch (CDBB) at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as the Director of the Early Learning and School Readiness Program. Prior to his position at NICHD, Dr. Griffin was a senior research analyst in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education. He also served as the assistant director for the Social, Behavioral, and Education (SBE) Sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and as a research analyst at the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF).

Dr. Griffin holds a B.A. summa cum laude in psychology from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. with honors in child clinical psychology from the University of Rochester. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Dr. Griffin's career has focused on research and evaluation efforts related to service systems and early intervention programs designed to enhance the development and school readiness of children from at-risk and disadvantaged backgrounds. These efforts include several large-scale evaluations of the Head Start program while at ACYF and research on preschool curricula involving geographically diverse child care, Head Start and state pre-kindergarten programs while with IES and NICHD.

He is a panelist on the Hooked on Tech? panel.