Director
Dr. Cabrera is a professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College of Education. Previously, Dr. Cabrera held an expert appointment in the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch of the National Institute of Child Development (NICHD). At NICHD, she was also an Executive Branch Fellow sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Cabrera was intimately involved in the planning and implementation of several projects including the Science and Ecology of Early Development, the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project's father study, and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort. Dr. Cabrera currently teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on social development, parenting, and child development and poverty. Her research interests include parent-child relationships, children's social and emotional development in different types of families and cultural/ethnic groups, school readiness, fatherhood, predictors of adaptive and maladaptive parenting, and translation of research into practice and policy.