Natasha Dow Schüll is a cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. She has recently completed a book based on extended research in Las Vegas among compulsive gamblers and the designers of the slot machines they play. Machine Life: Control and Compulsion in Las Vegas, will be published by Princeton University Press in early 2009. Her documentary film, BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas, has screened multiple times on PBS and appeared in numerous film festivals.

Schüll graduated Summa Cum Laude from UC Berkeley’s Department of Anthropology in 1993, later returning to receive her PhD in 2003. As a graduate student she was the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Schüll held postdoctoral positions as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and as a fellow at NYU’s International Center for Advanced Studies. She joined MIT’s department of Science, Technology, and Society in Fall 2007.

Schüll’s current research explores the social implications of emerging trends in Neuroscience, focusing on neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, and addiction pharmacology. The project is supported by a collaborative grant (with Caitlin Zaloom of NYU) from the National Science Foundation.