Dr. Pelham is a 1970 graduate of Dartmouth College and earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1976. He was a faculty member at Washington State University, Florida State University, the University Pittsburgh (WPIC), and the State University of New York at Buffalo (Director, Center for Children and Families) prior to moving to Florida International University in 2010, where he is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Children and Families. He remains an Emeritus SUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychology at SUNY Buffalo and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at WPIC.

His summer treatment program for ADHD children has been recognized by Divisions 53 and 37 of the APA and by CHADD as a model program, is listed on the SAMHSA NREPP list, and is widely recognized as the state of the art in treatment for children and adolescents with ADHD. Dr. Pelham has authored or co-authored more than 400 professional publications dealing with ADHD and its assessment and treatment—psychosocial, pharmacological, and combined—and was named as one of the top 10 among the country’s 1,900 academic clinical psychologists in number of peer-reviewed publications (Stewart, Wu, & Roberts, 2007).

Dr. Pelham is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, and past President of Division 53 of the American Psychological Association (APA; the Society of Child Clinical and Adolescent Psychology; SCCAP) and the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (ISRCAP). He is a past recipient of the CHADD Hall of Fame award (2002), the SCCAP Career Achievement Award (2009), the Trailblazer Awards of the Families and Parenting SIG (2010) and ADHD SIG (2011) of ABCT, and the 2012 lifetime achievement award from the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (Section 3 of Division 12, APA). He has held more than 80 research grants (16 current) from federal agencies (NIMH, NIAAA, NIDA, NINDS, NICHD, IES), foundations, and pharmaceutical companies. He has served as a consultant/advisor on ADHD and related topics to numerous federal agencies (NIMH, NIAAA, NIDA, IOM, OMAR, the CDC, and AHRQ,) and organizations (AAP, AACAP, APA, CHADD, NICHQ, SDBP). He founded and directs the biennial Niagara/Miami International Conference on Evidence-based Treatments for Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health Problems (MICAMH).

Dr. Pelham has focused his research on ADHD in children and adolescents. His interests include treatment, development and evaluation, including behavioral treatments, pharmacotherapy, and the combination of the two. Most recently, the treatment research has concentrated more on dosing and sequencing in behavioral, pharmacological and combined interventions. In addition, Dr. Pelham studies the outcomes in adolescence and adulthood of ADHD children, focusing on multiple domains including substance use.