Mary H. Burleson earned her doctorate in psychology (behavioral neuroscience program) from Arizona State University in 1994. Her postdoctoral training was at The Ohio State University in the Departments of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and of Psychology. In 1997, she joined ASU, where she directs the BioSocial Psychology Laboratory, combining ASU’s missions of research and teaching.

Burleson’s research focuses on biological aspects of socioemotional processes such as interpersonal regulation (how people use touch to regulate their own and each other's emotions and stress), and the multidirectional influences among stress, social connection, and women's reproductive health, sexuality, and well-being. Recent publications include daily diary studies of physical affection, sexual behavior, sleep quality, and next-day mood among women during the menopause transition (in Archives of Sexual Behavior and Menopause), and of how cohabiting couples’ touch during sleep relates to their mood and interaction quality on the following day (in press at Affective Science), a report on ethnocultural differences in attitudes and experiences of social touch between European Americans and Mexican Americans (in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships), and a theoretical paper on how social touch contributes to interoceptive processes and in turn to both emotional and physiological allostasis (in Social Neuroscience).

Burleson’s teaching specializations include physiological psychology, biological bases of behavior, the biology of human sexuality, brain damage and recovery of function, and psychopharmacology.