Meet our core collaborators!
Adam Brown, PhD
Dr. Brown is an assistant professor of social work at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is a clinical affiliate at the Institute for Sexual Wellness in Weymouth, Massachusetts and an expert consultant for Park Dietz and Associates in Newport Beach, California. His research focuses on problem behaviors among youth and young adults with an emphasis on the prevention of sexual harm, and has been featured in the Associated Press, Fox News, and the Shanghai Media Group. Before becoming a researcher, he was a full-time social worker in specialized foster care.
Kai Schnabel Cortina, PhD
Dr. Cortina is a Professor of Psychology at University of Michigan. His research interests include cognitive and psychosocial development in adolescence, school-to-work transition, and multivariate & longitudinal methods.
Terri Gilbert, MSW
Terri Gilbert has extensive experience in public and private sector leadership positions in human services. She has been actively involved in the development of a state-wide juvenile justice reform agenda and related initiatives. Specializing in organizational change and continuous improvement interventions, she developed the Child Welfare Improvement Bureau within the State of Michigan Department of Human Services’ Children’s Services Agency under the Granholm administration and served as the Director of Child Welfare Funding and Juvenile Justice under the Snyder administration. She has also served as the transitional executive director for two non-profit organizations, one serving juveniles in the state’s largest county and the other directing the state’s largest voluntary bar association. Her current interests are focused on improving and evaluating systems changes within juvenile justice, policy development and advocacy in child welfare and juvenile justice, and development of prevention programming in local educational and justice systems.
Poco Kernsmith, PhD, MSW, MPH
Dr. Kernsmith is a Professor and PhD Program Director in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University. Prior to beginning doctoral studies, she worked in domestic violence and sexual assault victim services agencies in crisis intervention, legal advocacy, and community outreach and education. Her current research focuses on the etiology and prevention of violence among youth, with particular focus on the gendered context of perpetration of violence. Her research also includes policy approaches for the prevention and treatment of violent perpetration.
Ryan Meldrum, PhD
Dr. Meldrum is a Professor and Director of Research and Communications in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida International University. His primary area of expertise centers on the factors that shape the development of self-control and its outcomes. His recent work also focuses on the causes and consequences of inadequate sleep during adolescence. He has more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in outlets such as Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Preventive Medicine, and Sleep Health. His research has been featured in the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, The Huffington Post, and Scientific American.
Lindsay M. Orchowski, PhD
Dr. Orchowski is Associate Professor (Research) within the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She is a Staff Psychologist for Lifespan Physicians Group at Rhode Island Hospital, and the Deputy Title IX Coordinator for the Medical School. Her research focuses on the design and evaluation of sexual assault prevention approaches.
Dennis Reidy, PhD
Dr. Reidy is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. His research focuses on informing, developing, and evaluating innovative interventions to prevent violence and associated delinquency outcomes (e.g., substance use, risky sexual behavior, mental health, etc.) and promote health and well-being. He is particularly interested in investigating cross-cutting risk and protective factors to inform the development of prevention strategies that will impact multiple health outcomes.
Jeff R. Temple, PhD
Dr. Temple is the Founding Director of the Center for Violence Prevention at UTMB, which aims to reduce the burden of violence by increasing the number of researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and community agencies who deliver, attend to, and support the development and implementation of evidence-based violence prevention, intervention, and policy. Dr. Temple’s work has been funded through the National Institute of Justice, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several regional and national foundations. He has over 135 peer-reviewed publications in a variety of high-impact journals including Pediatrics, JAMA, JAMA Pediatrics, and the American Journal of Public Health; and recently co-edited a book on adolescent dating violence. His research, primarily focusing on adolescent and young adult relationships, has been featured on CNN, New York Times, BBC, the Washington Post, and The Onion. He’s most proud of the latter.