Lowell’s primary responsibility at NORC is as Principal Investigator of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), a national large-scale longitudinal survey sponsored and funded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. The NLSY97 is the most recent of the surveys that comprise the broader National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) Program, which has been gathering information relevant to labor market experiences of U.S. cohorts since 1966. NLS data have been used by leading scholars to produce an extraordinary body of impactful research in economics, sociology, demography, developmental psychology, and social policy.

Lowell is the H. John Heinz III Professor of Economics at the Heinz College of Carnegie Mellon University. His research spans a broad set of topics in labor economics, health economics, and economic demography. This work has been published in leading scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, and Demography. His research also includes methodological contributions, published in such outlets as the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Psychometrica.

In 2000, Lowell served as Senior Economist for President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has received two major awards in health economics, the 20th Annual Arrow in Health Economics (2012) and the 11th Annual Health Care Research Award (2004), and he is a four-time recipient of the Martcia Wade Award for Teaching Excellence (1994, 2004, 2007 and 2021). In 2018 he was awarded a University Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University.