Stephen J. Suomi is chief of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in Bethesda, Maryland.
[1] Suomi was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his contributions to the understanding of how socialization affects the psychological development of non-human primates.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Suomi worked with Harry Harlow to develop the pit of despair, a series of controversial and widely condemned experiments on baby monkeys that have been credited by some researchers as starting the animal liberation movement in the United States.
[1] Suomi describes his current research interests as focusing on the role of genetic and environmental factors in shaping individual psychological development in non-human primates; the effect of change on psychological development; and whether findings on monkeys in captivity can translate to monkeys living in the wild, and between human beings of different cultures.
[5] However, in 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it would end monkey experiments for financial reasons, stressing that PETA's campaign "was not a factor in this decision".