David Reiss, MD
Principal Investigator
Director of Center for Family Research, The George Washington University

Dr. Reiss received his medical training and specialty training in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In over 40 years of medical practice, Dr. Reiss worked with many young adults to help them achieve their full potential and worked with many parents and children to help them strengthen their relationships with one another. Before coming to George Washington University (GWU) he headed programs at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) devoted to the study of families. NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health. For the past 30 years, Dr. Reiss directed the Center for Family Research at GWU where he now holds an endowed chair, The Vivian Gill Distinguished Research Professorship. Dr. Reiss' research, along with many of his colleagues in the United States and in Europe, centers on understanding the relationships between genetic and social influences on the development of toddlers, adolescents and adults. Dr. Reiss' research has won many awards including the MERIT award from NIMH, the Burgess Award from the National Council on Family Relationships and the Adolf Meyer Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Reiss’ research has been published in 130 papers and 7 books including a recent book on genetic and social factors in adolescent development, The Relationship Code (with Neiderhiser, Hetherington and Plomin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

Rand Conger, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, University of California, Davis

Dr. Conger received his doctoral degree in Sociology at the University of Washington. Throughout his career, Dr. Conger held faculty positions in several universities including the University of Georgia, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Iowa State University, where he was the founding Director of the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. From the beginning of his career, Dr. Conger pursued research designed to increase the understanding of how families promote the health and well being of individual family members, including during stressful times, such as downturns in the economy. As part of his research, Dr. Conger developed the Family Stress Model. This model describes the processes by which stressful events and conditions influence parents and children. It also looks at family processes that promote resiliency. Dr. Conger’s work has been replicated in other studies and the findings influenced the development of educational programs that have been shown to help parents reduce a child’s risk for substance use, emotional problems, and delinquent behavior. Dr. Conger has published approximately 200 journal articles, book chapters or books. One of his recent publications is Conger R.D. & Conger, K.J. (2002). Resilience in Midwestern families: Selected findings from the first decade of a prospective, longitudinal study. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 361-373. He also received awards for his research from the American Sociological Association, the National Council on Family Relations, the International Association for Relationship Research, and the National Association for Rural Mental Health. He is an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the National Council on Family Relations.

Xiaojia Ge, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Professor in Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis

Dr. Ge is a professor and child psychologist in Department of Human and Community Development at University of California, Davis (UCD). He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University. He specializes in research on adolescent behavioral and emotional development. His research interests include the relationship between hereditary and environmental influence on child development. He has authored and co-authored many articles in the area of adolescent behavioral and emotional development in professional journals. One example of this work is Ge, X., Conger, R.D., Neiderhiser, J., Troughton, E., Stewart, E., & Yates, W. (1996). The developmental interface between nature and nurture: A mutual influence model of adolescent antisocial behavior and parenting behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 32, 574-589. He is a member of the editorial board for Developmental Psychology, International Journal of Behavioral Development, and Journal of Family Psychology. Other areas of interests of Dr. Ge include familial and contextual influences in behavioral and emotional development. Dr. Ge’s primary roles in the Early Growth and Development Study include overseeing recruitment and data collection at UCD, as well as management of data for the entire project.

Leslie Leve, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Research Scientist, Oregon Social Learning Center

Dr. Leve received her doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of Oregon. Since 1995, she worked as a developmentalist on several projects at the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) in Eugene, Oregon. She leads a study of over 350 children focused on the role of parenting on toddler and child development, and serves as an investigator on another study examining the important role of fathers on child development. She also led a study of school-aged twins examining the importance of the peers and friendships. Dr. Leve is currently a Research Scientist at OSLC, which is known worldwide for its innovative research with families and children. Her developmental research has been published in over a dozen papers, including several that focus on adoptive and birth families. “Infant Temperament, Pleasure in Parenting, and Marital Happiness in Adoptive Families” (published in the Infant Journal of Mental Health with Scaramella and Fagot, 2001) is one example of this work. For the Early Growth and Development Study, Dr. Leve is responsible for supervising the interview team.

Jenae Neiderhiser, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor, Center for Family Research, The George Washington University

Dr. Neiderhiser received her doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Since 1988, she has been involved in studies looking at twins, siblings and adoptees in an effort to understand how children and their families influence each other. She came to George Washington University in 1994 and is now an Associate Professor in the Center for Family Research. Dr. Neiderhiser is currently finishing a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health looking at young adults and their family relations as well as collecting DNA. She is just beginning a study of twin fathers and mothers and their families based in Sweden. Her work has been published in journals specializing in developmental psychology and family relations. One recent publication summarizing the important role of individuals in influencing their own environments is Towers, Spotts & Neiderhiser (2000). Genetic and environmental influences on parenting and marital relationships: Current findings and future directions. Marriage and Family Review, 33(1), 11-29.  For the Early Growth and Development Study, Dr. Neiderhiser is responsible for supervising the recruitment team.

John Reid, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Director, Oregon Prevention Research Center

Dr. Reid is the Director of the Oregon Prevention Research Center (OPRC), which was founded in 1990. The mission of the OPRC is to develop and test prevention programs that promote prosocial behavior in the school, home, and community. Dr. Reid's reputation has grown since he received his doctoral degree from the University of Oregon in 1967, in large part through his investigation of family factors in prevention and promotion, his specialization of observation methodologies in randomized trials, and his development of several notable school-based randomized intervention trials. Dr. Reid's prevention program, Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers, has received national recognition as a Promising Program for Safe and Drug Free Schools. Dr. Reid has served on private, state, and federal task forces to try to determine the most effective intervention for delinquency and antisocial behavior, and he chaired several National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant-evaluation committees. During the past three years, Dr. Reid has served on several national policy committees, including the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Representation of Minority Children in Special Education from 1999-2002, the Planning Board and Peer Reviewer section of the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, and as a Contributing Expert to the NIMH report, Taking Stock of Risk Factors for Child/Youth Externalizing Behavior Problems.

Laura Scaramella, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor of Psychology, University of New Orleans

Dr. Scaramella received her doctoral degree from the University of Arizona in Child Development and Family Studies. She began her work with Rand Conger, Ph.D. at Iowa State University studying family transitions and parenting methods across generations. Currently, Dr. Scaramella is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Orleans. Dr. Scaramella’s current research is focused on the quality of parent-child interactions on the emergence of problem behaviors during childhood and adolescence. A recent publication, Scaramella, L.V. & Conger, R.D. (2003-2004). Temperament as a moderator of parenting effects on child antisocial behavior: An intergenerational examination. Social Development, 12, 420-439 is an example of this work. For the Early Growth and Development Study, Dr. Scaramella is responsible for coordination and development of the assessments and conducting pilot interviews.

Daniel Shaw
Principal Investigator
Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Shaw received his doctoral training in Clinical and Developmental Psychology at the University of Virginia. Since 1988, he worked as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. During the past 15 years, he led several studies examining the development of psychopathology in young children, with a primary interest in tracing the development of antisocial behavior. He currently leads four projects investigating the early background and treatment of childhood conduct problems and depression funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). For his 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 currently holds a Research Scientist Award from NIMH, has served on several editorial review boards of journals (e.g., Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology) and expert panels convened by NIH, and published extensively on risk factors associated with conduct problems in early childhood. Recent papers can be accessed on his Project’s Web site: http://www.pitt.edu/~momchild, including ‘A truly early starter model of antisocial behavior revisited,’ published in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 3, 155-172.