Ruth Tappen, EdD, RN, FAAN, is the Christine E. Lynn Eminent Scholar and Professor in the College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Dr. Tappen began her nursing career as a staff nurse on adult medical, surgical, neurological and orthopedic units and her teaching career at Mt. St. Mary College in Newburgh, New York, followed by a move to Florida where she became the Patient Education Coordinator at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital before joining the faculty at the University of Miami, where she developed a master’s program in Community Health Nursing, directed the PhD in Nursing program, served as Interim Dean and received her first two grants, from Sigma and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. she received a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona College of Nursing in Tucson, where she studied instrument development, conducted research on expression of emotion in individuals with Alzheimer's disease and defined two primary lines of research: care transitions and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

She has received funding from the Administration on Aging, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, National Institute on Nursing Research, Retirement Research Foundation, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, among other organizations. She currently has funding from the Florida Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer's Disease Initiative for a study called Fit2Drive and from the National Institute on Aging for In-Vehicle Sensors to Detect Cognitive Change in Older Adults.

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