After five years of leading the Penn State Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), Deborah Ehrenthal, professor of biobehavioral health, will step down as director and return to the faculty within the College of Health and Human Development at the end of 2026.
SSRI is one of nine interdisciplinary research institutes at Penn State that promote collaboration across departmental boundaries to focus research on vital scientific questions and pressing societal needs. SSRI researchers investigate topics in the social and behavioral sciences, including military-connected individual and family well-being, child maltreatment, population research, substance use and addiction, and environmental change, among others.
“Deb leaves an extraordinary legacy at SSRI. In just five years, she has strengthened the institute’s research enterprise, expanded its impact, and elevated its reputation as a leader in addressing complex societal issues through innovative research,” said Andrew Read, senior vice president for research. “Her outstanding leadership has positioned SSRI for continued success, and her impact on the institute and the wider research community will be felt long into the future. We look forward to her continued contributions to Penn State as she returns to the faculty.”
Under Ehrenthal’s leadership, SSRI significantly expanded its research capacity by recruiting 25 co-funded tenure-line faculty; investing in key research facilities and centers, such as the Survey Research Center and the Social, Life, and Engineering Imaging Center; and launching new resources, including the Community-Engaged Research, Action, and Partnerships unit and the Data Resources HUB. She strengthened seed grant, workgroup grant, and faculty fellowship programs to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and support emerging research opportunities.
A champion of Penn State’s land-grant mission, Ehrenthal also advanced community-engaged and partnership-based research through initiatives such as the Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction and the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network. Her tenure saw growth in policy-focused and public impact research, including support for work on the Opioid Settlement Fund, a congressional earmark for the Pennsylvania Addiction Action Network, and a successful WT Grant Foundation Institutional Challenge Grant, which she will continue to lead as principal investigator. She also helped strengthen Penn State’s research culture by promoting evidence-based faculty search and mentoring practices and launching a new mid-career fellowship focused on building research-practice partnerships with state and local agencies.
“Throughout my time as SSRI director I have been a strong advocate for the critical importance of social and behavioral science research across a university’s entire research portfolio. My greatest satisfaction has come from being part of the incredible community of scholars and staff committed to advancing high-quality research,” Ehrenthal said. “Focused on people, community, and public health, social and behavioral science research is critical to solving our most important challenges and creating a lasting public impact.”
Ehrenthal brought to Penn State a distinguished record of leadership in women’s health, maternal and child health, public health, and interdisciplinary research administration. She received a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, earned her medical degree from the University of Massachusetts and completed residency training in internal medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital.
Her 22 years in a large academic community hospital provided deep, practical experience designing and implementing programs for at-risk women in both clinical office practice and inpatient settings. Throughout the course of her career, her research has focused on perinatal health and health care, women’s cardiovascular disease, and child health. She has supported her research, training programs, and university centers with more than $17 million in external awards, including funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prior to her recruitment to Penn State, Ehrenthal spent seven years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directed a postdoctoral training program in health disparities research funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and founded the University of Wisconsin Prevention Research Center — a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded center dedicated to expanding the evidence base for prevention strategies to improve the health of women, infants, and families.
A national search for a new director will be launched, led by Craig Newschaffer, Raymond E. and Erin Stuart Schultz Dean of the College of Health and Human Development, with a goal of having a new director installed by January 2027. No interim director will be named; instead, Ehrenthal will remain in the role until a new director begins.