Pamela A. Morris-Perez, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; Affiliated Professor, NYU School of Global Public Health

Dr. Morris-Perez is a Principal Investigator on the MPI NIH-funded $5.5M project: Integrated model for promoting parenting and early school readiness in pediatrics. An interdisciplinary scholar, Morris-Perez conducts research at the intersection of developmental psychology, suicidology, education, and policy. In her 25 year career, she has secured more than $75M in funding and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and policy reports. Her early childhood work includes a $4M IES-funded partnership with NYCs Department of Education to support the historic Pre-k for All. Morris-Perez’s newest research, borne from the loss of her 17-year-old daughter to suicide in 2019, addresses adolescent suicide from a developmentally-informed, population-health perspective as part of the newly launched center, ARCADIA (A Research Center for Adolescent Interconnected Approaches) for Suicide Prevention. With over $6M in funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and NIMH, she brings suicide prevention to the spaces that youth already are (schools and emergency departments) to help more youth connect to care more quickly. A former William T. Grant scholar, Morris-Perez served as lead editor of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. 

Alan Mendelsohn, M.D., Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center

Dr. Mendelsohn is co-principal investigator on this project: Integrated model for promoting parenting and early school readiness in pediatrics. Dr. Mendelsohn is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician who is Director of Research for the Divisions of General and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics and Co-Director of Biostatistical Analysis Coursework for the NYU Clinical and Translational Science Institute - Masters of Science Program in Clinical Investigation. Dr. Mendelsohn is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood and the Academic Pediatric Association Child Poverty Task Force. He has received national recognition for his work as a Zero to Three Leaders for the 21st Century Harris Fellow. Dr. Mendelsohn's research has focused on poverty-related disparities in critical child outcomes including child development, obesity and chronic disease. He has investigated the role of environmental factors, both psychosocial (parent-child interactions, electronic media exposure, maternal depression, maternal literacy/health literacy, feeding practices) and biologic (lead), in relation to these outcomes. Dr. Mendelsohn's studies have demonstrated the potential role for the pediatric primary care setting as a universal platform for promotion of school readiness through enhanced parenting, through interventions such as Reach out and Read and PlayReadVIP (previously called Video Interaction Project [VIP]). Dr. Mendelsohn has been the recipient of NIH/NICHD R01 funding as a Principal Investigator since 2005. Dr. Mendelsohn is also a co-author of an instrument (StimQ) that can be used to assess the cognitive home environment in low income households.

Daniel Shaw, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Department Chair, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh 

Dr. Shaw is co-principal investigator on the project: Integrated model for promoting parenting and early school readiness in pediatrics. Dr. Shaw is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. At Pitt, he also serves as the Director of the Center for Parents and Children and the Director of the Pitt Parents and Children Laboratory (PPCL),with joint appointments in the Schools of Medicine and Education, and Centers for Social and Urban Research and Translational Research. Since receiving his Ph.D. in child clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Virginia in 1988, his primary interest has involved tracing the early developmental precursors of early problem behavior among at-risk children. He currently co-directs five NIH-funded, longitudinal studies investigating the early antecedents and prevention of childhood conduct and mental health problems and the promotion of school readiness among low-income, ethnically/racially diverse children. He also leads the Early Childhood Collaborative of The Pittsburgh Study, a population-level implementation of a tiered parenting program model for children 0-5 years of age in the Pittsburgh community. For his conceptual and empirical work on the development of young children’s conduct problems, he was awarded the Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award by APA’s Division of Developmental Psychology in 1995. He also was awarded the Robert B. Cairns Award for Contributions to Developmental Science by the Carolina Consortium on Human Development (2015). Dr. Shaw is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), APA’s Division 53 on Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology (2005), and the Society for Prevention Research (2020), the latter of which includes approximately 35 individuals. He held a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health or National Institute on Drug Abuse from 1999 to 2014, is Associate Editor of the journal, Development and Psychopathology, has served on several editorial review boards of journals (e.g., Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology), and has been a member of several expert panels convened by NIH and HHS, including recently serving as Chair of Psychosocial Development, Risk, and Prevention IRG (2019-2021). Dr. Shaw has published extensively on risk factors associated with the development and prevention of child and adolescent problem behavior, with more than 420 publications.

Caitlin Canfield, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Caitlin is a developmental psychologist who focuses on how children’s characteristics and environments affect their individual development. She is currently studying the impacts of stress at the family and neighborhood levels on family well-being, parenting, and children’s early development. Caitlin’s long-term goals involve using her research experience to determine how interventions aimed at improving children’s cognitive and emotional well-being can be tailored to meet each child and family’s individual needs.

Anne Seery, Ph.D., Director, PlayReadVIP National Center at NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Anne Seery, Ph.D., is the Director of the PlayReadVIP National Center at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Seery has been working with PlayReadVIP since 2014, where she has been leading expansion and growth, including helping to grow the program from its initial 2 locations while supporting development of program materials, training structure, and implementation processes.  She is a developmental psychologist with a goal of ensuring that all children have the resources to thrive and start school ready to learn.  She completed her BA in psychology and mathematics from Rutgers University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology/Human Development from Boston University, where her doctoral work focused on investigation of the early progression of autism spectrum disorder, including working to understand early symptoms or biomarkers in infancy before a diagnosis is possible.

Erin Roby, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine 

Erin is a developmental psychologist whose research is focused on the development of skills that are important for children’s social and academic success such as social cognition, social competence, and language. The overarching goal of her work is to identify the factors that support these abilities. She has conducted research in laboratory and community-based settings, as well as in the context of applied research implementing preventive parenting interventions aimed to reduce poverty-related disparities in child development. Thus her work bridges basic and translational developmental science. Dr. Roby has co-authored several papers demonstrating the efficacy of the SMART Beginnings model. She is also the recipient of an NIH NIMHD K01 award focused on implementing pediatric primary care based parenting interventions, such as PlayReadVIP (primary prevention strategy in SMART Beginnings), in underserved rural populations.

Danruo Zhong, Ph.D., Research Scientist, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Dr. Danruo Zhong received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the impacts of early life stress (e.g., poverty and deprivation) on physical and mental health in children and adolescents, and how parenting interventions mitigate these adverse effects. Her goal is to use her research to better inform practice and intervention efforts to reduce health and developmental disparities in the developing population.

Margaret Griffin, B.A., Research Coordinator, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Margaret received her B.A. in Psychological Sciences from Colgate University. She joined the team as a Research Intern in 2021 and has since gained valuable experience as a Research Assistant, and now as a Research Coordinator supporting the implementation of the SMART Beginnings program and conducting developmental assessments of participants. Motivated by her goal to improve access to mental health resources within underserved communities, Margaret hopes to pursue a degree in Mental Health Counseling in the future.

Victoria Guevara, B.S.,  Research Assistant, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Vicky received her B.S. in Biology and Society with minors in Inequality Studies and Psychology from Cornell University. She joined our team in January 2023. Her previous experience includes working as an undergraduate research assistant studying language acquisition and spatial recognition in preschoolers, as well as mentoring school-aged children to pursue a future in research and medicine. She is interested in learning more about serving Spanish-speaking families and children. Vicky is passionate about childhood development and is planning on pursuing a career in medicine as a physician.

Luisa Vaca-Condado, Research Assistant, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Luisa received her BA in Psychology from New York University. She joined our team in March 2020. Previous experiences include working in community outreach, private practice, and medical education. She has volunteered in hospital settings in New York and education in London. Luisa is interested in how children develop language especially in bilingual homes.