Dr. Aiken is director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, and is The Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing, Professor of Sociology, and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Aiken is an authority on causes, consequences, and solutions for nurse shortages in the United States and around the world. Dr. Aiken leads the International Hospital Outcomes Consortium studying the impact of nursing on patient outcomes in 8 countries, and directed the Nursing Quality Improvement Program in Russia and Armenia demonstrating the successful application of twinning initiatives in nursing to improve hospital quality. She is a member of the Expert Advisory Panel guiding the World Alliance for Patient Safety. She is a leading expert on global nurse migration, its consequences, and solutions in developing and developed countries.

Dr. Aiken is winner of the 2006 Baxter International Foundation’s William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research, the 2006 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Award from Research! America for Sustained National Leadership in Health Research, and the 2005AcademyHealth Distinguished Investigator Award in Health Services Research. She won the 2003 Individual Earnest A. Codman Award from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) for her leadership utilizing performance measures to demonstrate relationships between nursing care and patient outcomes. Her research is frequently cited by the press, and she is winner of 3 American Academy of Nursing Media Awards.

She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and she is a former president of the American Academy of Nursing, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in the United Kingdom.