Prior to his present position at UA, David B. Yaden Jr. (Ph.D., University of Oklahoma) held appointments at Emory University, the University of Houston, and the University of Southern California. He has been a principal investigator in the federally-funded Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) where he supervised the implementation of an early literacy curriculum for Spanish-speaking preschoolers in inner-city Los Angeles. His research interests and specializations include developmental issues in early childhood education, the acquisition of literacy and biliteracy in young children, family literacy, theories of reading disability and the application of complex adaptive systems theory to growth in reading and writing.