Four IHDSC scholarly affiliates have received prestigious awards recognizing their outstanding scientific contributions in the areas of Psychology, Child Development, and Justice research. Join us in extending our heartfelt congratulations on these extraordinary achievements, which exemplify IHDSC’s mission to advance research that fosters equity, human development, and social transformation.
J. Lawrence Aber, University Professor and the Paulette Goddard Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at NYU Steinhardt, has been recognized for Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural, and Contextual Diversity in Child Development by the Society for Research in Child Development (SCRD). SCRD awarded Dr. Aber this honor for his outstanding contributions investigating the culture- and context-specific influences of poverty, violence, and related risk and protective factors on children’s development in the United States, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Dr. Aber has transformed global approaches to early childhood development through his leadership as co-founder and former co-director of NYU’s Global TIES for Children Center. This recognition highlights Dr. Aber’s decades-long, seminal efforts translating science into the design, evaluation, and implementation of complex place-based programs interventions to enhance children’s learning and development, and for his promotion of intervention research across organizations, cultures and contexts.
Diane L. Hughes, Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt, has been named a recipient of the 2026 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The award recognizes a lifetime of outstanding contributions to applied psychological research. Over the past twenty-five years, Dr. Hughes has led the field of developmental psychology in the study of racial socialization, the process by which parents communicate messages about race, ethnicity, and racism to their children. Dr. Hughes’s contributions have profoundly shaped knowledge in developmental and applied psychology and created pathways for more equitable research and practices across disciplines.
Guillermina Jasso, Silver Professor of Arts & Science and Professor of Sociology at NYU A&S, has received the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Justice Research. The award recognizes Dr. Jasso’s distinguished and sustained contributions to the scientific study of justice and for efforts to advance justice as a field of study. Dr. Jasso’s research spans the mathematical formulation of sociobehavioral theory, distributive justice, inequality and stratification, international migration, and methods for empirical analysis.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt, has been awarded the 2025 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize, a prestigious honor in child and youth development research. This prize recognizes exceptional scientific contributions that advance the understanding, well-being, and development of children and youth worldwide. Dr. Yoshikawa, a community and developmental psychologist, has transformed global approaches to early childhood development through his leadership as co-founder and former co-director of NYU’s Global TIES for Children Center. His research has shaped international policy, informed large-scale interventions with organizations such as Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and provided education and support to children and families affected by conflict and displacement. Read more from NYU about Dr. Yoshikawa's achievement.
