Maria Martí Castañer

Maria Marti is a postdoctoral research scientist in Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. Originally from Spain, she moved to the United States in 2010 to finish her training in family therapy working mostly with immigrant families. In 2011 she was awarded with an Advanced Training Fellowship from the Alicia Koplowitz foundation to continue her training in child and adolescent clinical psychology at Columbia University. Marti received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in 2015 under Dr. Helena Duch supervision, Assistant Professor at the Mailman School pf Public Health. Her graduate research focused on how the accumulation of family risk factors and parent-child interaction influence child social-emotional development in Latino children attending Head Start. As a postdoctoral researcher, her work focuses on design and evaluation of preventive interventions in community-based settings. For the past 5 years she has worked on the evaluation of “Getting Ready for School,” an innovative pre-K supplemental curriculum that engages both teachers and parents in promoting school readiness. The curriculum has been implemented in 30 classrooms in New York City. Her most recent research focuses on designing and assessing innovative ways of supporting and increasing parent engagement in school readiness interventions for low income families. Since she moved to New York city in 2010 she has always worked closely with Latino immigrant communities.