SRCD Invited Program

  Dr. Adam Benforado is a law professor and the New York Times bestselling author of Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice and A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All.  A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he served as a federal appellate law clerk and an attorney at Jenner & Block, before joining Drexel University. Dr. Benforado has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and his op-eds and essays have appeared in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, Time, and Rolling Stone.

• Professional Website
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: Children’s rights and criminal justice

  Dr. Natasha J. Cabrera is Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on mothering and fathering behaviors and children’s social and cognitive development; adaptive and maladaptive factors related to parenting; cultural variation in ethnic minority families; and the mechanisms linking early experiences to children’s school readiness. 

She is the co-editor of the Handbook of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 2nd Edition (Taylor & Francis, 2013) and co-author of How Fathers Help their Children Develop: Money & Love (Cambridge Univ Press, 2025). She is the Editor-in-chief of SRCD Monographs and the recipient of the National Council and Family Relations award for Best Research Article regarding men in families in 2009. She was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences committee on parents of young children, was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar; and, and a visiting scholar, University of Ruhr, Germany.

• Professional Website
• Follow Natasha on LinkedIn
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: cultural and ethnic differences in parenting and children's outcomes

  Dr. Sierra Carter is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Associate Director of the Center for Family Research at the University of Georgia whose work centers on racial health disparities and maternal mortality among Black Americans. Her interdisciplinary research integrates psychology, biology, public health, and developmental science to examine how racism and trauma operate as chronic, multilevel stressors that shape health across the life course. 

Dr. Carter’s work specifically investigates how psychosocial and contextual stressors during pregnancy contribute to adverse maternal outcomes and long-term health inequities. Through federally funded research and community-engaged approaches, she identifies psychological, physiological, and social mechanisms—such as stress biomarkers and coping processes—that underlie disparities in maternal health. Committed to translational impact, her scholarship advances culturally informed, prevention-oriented interventions and amplifies dissemination to communities and policymakers. Dr. Carter’s work ultimately seeks to reduce maternal mortality and promote health equity by addressing the structural and intergenerational impacts of racism on Black women’s health.

• Professional Websites: https://psychology.uga.edu/directory/people/sierra-carter; https://www.drsierracarter.com/
• Follow Sierra on LinkedIn and on Bluesky
• Session Type (Format): Invited Session
• Session Topic: maternal mortality and health disparities

  Dr. Carolina de Weerth earned a master’s degree in biology (animal behavior) from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Groningen, NL. In 2018, following the award of a prestigious personal Vici grant, Dr. de Weerth became principal investigator and group leader at Radboud University Medical Center and the Donders Institute in Nijmegen, NL. She maintains extensive national and international research collaborations. 

Dr. de Weerth conducts innovative research examining how early-life environmental exposures shape development and influence lifelong trajectories. Her work focuses on the impact of prenatal and postnatal maternal mental health complaints, as well as caregiving choices and quality, on children’s development, including physical health and behavioral regulation. To elucidate underlying mechanisms, Dr. de Weerth integrates key physiological systems and biomarkers, such as the intestinal microbiota, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, maternal milk, and telomeres.

• Professional Website
• Follow Carolina on LinkedIn
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: early life stress in community, low-risk populations

  Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is the Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in Psychology at Temple University, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Visiting Professor at Oxford University. Her research examines the development of early language and literacy, the role of play in learning and learning and technology. She is the author of 17 books and hundreds of publications, has won numerous awards in her field including being inducted into the National Academy of Education and the Association of Children’s Museum’s Best Friend to Kids Award. Vested in translating science for lay and professional audiences, her Becoming Brilliant, released in 2016 was on the NYTimes Best Seller List in Education. Her book Making Schools Work was released in late Fall of 2022 and Einstein Never used Flashcards was re-released in January of 2026.

• Professional Page
• Follow Dr. Hirsh-Pasek on Instagram @DrKathyAndDrRo
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: early childhood cognitive development

  Dr. Stefanie Hoehl is Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Vienna where she directs the Wiener Kinderstudien lab. She received her PhD from the University of Leipzig in 2008. From 2016 to 2019 she led the Max Planck Research Group on Early Social Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. Her research lies at the intersection of developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience and focuses on social and cognitive development in early childhood.

• Professional Page
• Follow Stephanie Hoehl on Bluesky @stefaniehoehl.bsky.social
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: early mother-child interaction

  Dr. Brenda Jones Harden is the Ruth Harris Ottman Professor of Child and Family Welfare at the Columbia University School of Social Work and Professor Emerita of Human Development at the University of Maryland. She directs the Prevention and Early Adversity Research Laboratory, where she and her research team examine the developmental and mental health needs of young children who have experienced early adversity, particularly those who have been maltreated, are in foster care, or have experienced other forms of trauma. A particular focus is preventing maladaptive outcomes in these populations through early childhood programs, which she has implemented and evaluated. 

Dr. Jones Harden uses research to improve the quality and effectiveness of child and family services and to inform child and family policy, especially in the areas of home visiting, early care and education, infant/early childhood mental health, and child welfare. She is currently a site Principal Investigator and Associate Director of the largest U.S. research study to examine the brain and behavioral development of young children who have experienced adversity (i.e., Healthy Brain and Child Development; hbcdstudy.org). She is a former SRCD Executive Branch Fellow, is the immediate past-President of the Board of Zero to Three and served as the co-chair of SRCD’s Communications and Policy Committee for 6 years. She received a PhD in developmental and clinical psychology from Yale University and a master’s in social work from New York University.

• Session Type : Invited Session
• Session Topic: adversity and early prevention research

  Dr. Charles A. Nelson III is Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  He also holds the Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research at Boston Children’s Hospital. Among his many honors he has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the British Academy. In 2021 he received the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize and in 2023 he received the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development award.

• Professional Page
• Follow Charles A. Nelson III on Facebook @wherekidshelpkids/
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: early experiences and brain development

  Brian Nosek co-developed the Implicit Association Test, a method that advanced research and public interest in implicit bias. Nosek co-founded three non-profit organizations: Project Implicit to advance research and education about implicit bias (http://projectimplicit.net/), the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science to improve the research culture in his home discipline (http://improvingpsych.org/), and the Center for Open Science (COS; http://cos.io/) to improve rigor, transparency, integrity, and reproducibility across research disciplines. 

Nosek is Executive Director of COS and a professor at the University of Virginia. Nosek’s research and applied interests are to understand why people and systems produce behaviors that are contrary to intentions and values; to develop, implement, and evaluate solutions to align practices with values; and to improve research credibility and cultures to accelerate progress.

• Professional Website
• Follow Brian Nosek on Bluesky @briannosek.bsky.social and on LinkedIn
• Session Type: Invited Session
• Session Topic: open science