Tara Grillos is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University and a member of the university's Building Sustainable Communities cluster. She received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado's Institute of Behavioral Science.

Her research focuses on the human dimensions of sustainable development policy. She is interested in questions of inequality, participation, deliberation, procedural justice, collective action, and public goods provision, particularly with respect to natural resource dilemmas in developing countries.