Robert Selman served as chair of the Human Development and Psychology area from 2000 to 2004. He is the founder within this area of the Prevention Science and Practice Program — in 1992 —and served as its first director through 1999. At the Harvard Medical School, he is professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, where he serves as senior associate at the Judge Baker Children's Center and at the Department of Psychiatry at Children's Hospital Boston. Selman has engaged in research and practice focused on how to help children develop social awareness and engagement competencies as a way to reduce risks to their health and to promote their social relationships as well as their academic performance. Currently, he does practice-based research, studying interpersonal and intergroup development across the age range from preschool through high school. His current work on the promotion of children's understanding of ways to get along with others from different backgrounds is conducted in the context of literacy and language arts curricula at the elementary level; in school-based programs designed to coordinate support and prevention services for students at the middle grade level in public schools; and in the social studies, literature, and history curricula at the high school level. Past work focused on the treatment of psychological disorders of youth in day school and residential treatment and the prevention of these disorders in children and adolescents placed at risk.