• Lisa Diamond
• Charles Irwin
• Emilie Phillips Smith
• Reed Larson
• Nancy Galambos
• Daniel Keating

• Kathryn Wentzel
• Lawrence Walker
• Lorah Dorn
• Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck
• Bonnie Leadbeater

Dr. Diamond is one of the world's leading experts on adolescent sexuality. She currently is a professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah.Dr. Diamond received her doctorate in Human Development from Cornell University.Her research focuses on two distinct but related areas -- the nature and development of affectional bonds and the nature and development of same-sex sexuality. The common thread uniting these lines of research is her interest in the psychological and biobehavioral processes underlying intimate relationships and their influence on emotional experience and functioning over the life course. Her research on attachment has been supported by grants from NIMH, the Templeton Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. She was recently awarded the 2004 Emerging Scholar award from the American Association of University Women, the Louise Kidder Early Career Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the Boyd McCandless Award for early-career theoretical contributions to developmental psychology.

Dr. Irwin is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on adolescent health. He currently holds these positions: Professor and Vice Chairman of Pediatrics, and Director of the Division of Adolescent Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine; faculty member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF; and Director of both the National Adolescent Health Information Center and the Public Policy Analysis and Education Center for Middle Childhood, Adolescent, and Young Adult Health. He also has been director of the Leadership Education in Adolescent Health program since 1977. This program has trained over 150 health professional postdoctoral and graduate students. His research has focused on risky behaviors during adolescence and on methods of identifying adolescents who are prone to initiate health-damaging behaviors during the second decade of life. His current research focuses on improving preventive screening practices in clinical practice and other access to care issues confronting adolescents and young adults. He is the author of numerous publications and the editor of several texts focusing on pediatric and adolescent health. Dr. Irwin has received the outstanding achievement award for research from the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the National Center for Youth Law's annual award recognizing his research in high risk youth, the Ambulatory Pediatric Association's Teaching Award for training physicians in the behavioral sciences, the Swedish Medical Society's International Lectureship Award, the American Academy of Pediatrics' Adele Hofmann Lifetime Achievement Award in Adolescent Health, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine's Outstanding Achievement Award (1999). He also served as the first chair of the American Board of Pediatrics' Sub-board of Adolescent Medicine (1991-1998) and President of the Society for Adolescent Medicine (2002-03). Dr. Irwin is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Dr. Smith is a leading expert on diversity. She currently a professor in Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where she also is involved with the Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts and the Prevention Research Center. Dr. Smith teaches courses on adolescence, family diversity, and risk and resilience. Her work has involved a number of local and national initiatives across multiple sites to reduce violence and aggression using school-based and targeted family intervention. She has authored numerous papers on the role of racial identity, culture, and ethnicity in child and family development. Her forthcoming edited book with Nancy Guerra is entitled Preventing Youth Violence in a Multicultural Society.

Dr. Larson is one of the world's leading experts on adolescent development. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and currently is the Pampered Chef Endowed Chair in Family Resiliency and a professor in the Departments of Human and Community Development, Psychology, Leisure Studies, Kinesiology, and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Larson's research focuses on the daily experience of adolescents and their parents. He has co-authored these highly acclaimed books: Divergent Realities: The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents (with Maryse Richards) and Being Adolescent: Conflict and Growth in the Teenage Years (with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). Dr. Larson has conducted research on adolescents' media use, time alone, experience with friends, and school experience. He recently completed a study of middle socioeconomic status adolescents in India, and was the chair of the Study Group on Adolescence in the 21^st Century, sponsored by the Society for Research on Adolescence. His current area of interest focuses on adolescents' experience in extra-curricular activities, community-based programs, and others structured, voluntary activities in the after-school hours.

Dr. Galambos is a leading expert on many aspects of adolescent development, including gender, health, and family contexts. She currently is Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in human development and was a professor at the University of Victoria in Canada for two decades. Dr. Galambos research focuses on the antecedents and consequences of adolescent risk and health behavior, the importance of the family context in shaping adolescent behavior, and the nature and definition of psychosocial maturity in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Her interests in gender roles have led to publications on gender differences in risk behaviors, depression, and nonverbal behaviors in young people. Dr. Galambos is currently Assistant Editor for the Journal of Adolescence, has served on numerous editorial boards for journals in the field of adolescence, and was co-editor for 10 years of the Research Monographs in Adolescence series.

Daniel Keating is one of the world's leading experts on cognitive development in adolescence. He currently is the Atkinson Professor in Human Development and Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Dr. Keating is also a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) and has has written extensively on adolescent development and the prospects for human development in society. A conceptual framework that synthesizes much of this work has been most recently summarized in his co-edited book, Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations.

Dr. Wentzel is one of the world's leading experts on adolescent motivation and school adjustment. She obtained her doctoral degree from Stanford University and is currently a Professor of Human Development in the Department of Human Development/Institute for Child Study in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Wentzel is the Vice President of Division E, Counseling and Human Development, of the American Educational Reserach Association, and has also held positions in the American Psychological Association, Div. 15. and the Society for Research on Child Development. Her research focuses on relations of young adolescents' interpersonal relationships with parents, peers, and teachers to their motivation and adjustment to middle school.

Dr. Walker is one of the world's leading experts on moral development. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Toronto and curently is Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Walker is currently the Director of the Graduate Program in Psychology at UBC and associate editor of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, as well as serving on the editorial boards of several other journals. He is Past-President of the Association for Moral Education, the major international scholarly organization in the fields of moral psychology and moral education, and a fellow of both the Canadian and American Psychological Associations. Dr. Walker has published extensively on the psychology of moral development and has received awards for excellence in research, university teaching, and contributions to the profession. His current research focuses on moral exemplarity and the formation of a moral personality and identity. Dr. Walker also is an avid ocean kayaker and cyclist.

Dr. Dorn is a leading expert on the biological foundations of adolescence. She currently is Professor of Pediatrics in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Director of Research in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Dorn's research focuses on the potential vulnerability of biological transitions in early adolescence. Specifically she focuses on the biological transition of puberty and the concomitant changes in stress and reproductive hormones and how they are associated with both physical and mental health outcomes.

Dr. Zimmer-Gembeck is a leading expert on social relationships and vocational development in adolescence. She currently is a professor at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Her interests include vocational development, autonomy and identity, romantic and other peer relationships, sexuality, and relational aggression. Dr. Gembeck also directs The Family Interaction Program, a center that develops, pilots, evaluates and disseminates innovative programs to improve the lives of children, families, schools, classrooms and communities.

Dr. Leadbeater is a leading expert on social relationships in adolescence. She currently is a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She is Director of the Centre for Youth and Society's research and programs that promote youth health and resilience through community-university research partnerships (www.youth.society.uvic). Her areas of research expertise include depression in adolescence,resilience among high risk youth, and the prevention of peer victimization. She is co-editor of several books including Resilience in children, families and communities: Linking context to intervention and policy and a new inter-disciplinary volume entitled: Ethics in community-based research.