2026 Visiting Scholars Speaker Series & Community Networking Conference

Dr. Bridget Armstrong is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health. Trained as a clinical and health psychologist, she studies how children and families use digital media—and how those habits shape sleep, physical activity, and social-emotional well-being. Her work blends innovative tools like mobile sensing technology with measures of day-to-day family experiences to get a clearer, more accurate picture of screen time in real life. She’s passionate about helping the field move beyond self-reported screen use toward measurements that truly reflect how kids engage with technology. At the heart of her research is a goal to guide practical strategies and policies that help children and families build healthy relationships with their screens.

Dr. Shannon T. Brady is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, where she studies how people make meaning of themselves and their environments and the consequences for well-being, belonging, achievement, relationships, and health. She leverages insights from social psychological theory to develop and test practices and policies that improve these outcomes, with a focus on ensuring all students and teachers have opportunities to thrive. Dr. Brady’s work has been published in top-tier journals including Science and Educational Researcher, and she was recently awarded Wake Forest’s Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental and Psychological Sciences from Stanford University and her M.S. in Education from Black Hills State University. Before graduate school, she taught at Taopi Cikala Owayawa (Little Wound School) on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Dr. Adam Dovico is an accomplished teacher, curriculum facilitator, principal, professor, speaker, and author. For over two decades, he has taught students of all ages through his engaging and rigorous teaching style. He has also provided professional development for educators from around the world through his keynotes, workshops, and books. He has been recognized by organizations such as the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund, Learning for Justice, and the Atlanta Falcons for his leadership and teaching, and he continues to work for greater equity in schools through his culturally responsive pedagogy.

Dr. Shaketha A. Gray is a board-certified Adolescent Medicine physician in the section of General Academic Pediatrics at Atrium Health Brenner’s Children’s Hospital. She earned a medical degree from St. George’s University and completed her residency in Pediatrics at Elmhurst Hospital associated with Mount Sinai in New York. She then completed a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine, and the National Association of Pediatrics and Adolescent Gynecology. Since coming to Brenner’s Children’s hospital in 2022, she has created several specialized clinics for adolescents including the Pediatric and Adolescent Eating Disorder Clinic.

Ana S. Iltis, PhD. is the Carlson Professor of University Studies, Professor of Philosophy, and Director, Center for Bioethics, Health and Society at Wake Forest University. She holds an appointment in the Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy at Wake Forest School of Medicine. She is a past President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, a Fellow of the Hastings Center, and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Dr. Iltis is Founding Co-Editor of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics (Johns Hopkins University Press), Associate Editor of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (Oxford University Press), and co-editor of the Annals of Bioethics (Routledge) series. Most recently, she edited the Oxford Handbook of Research Ethics. Iltis’ scholarly focus is primarily on the ethical conduct of human research, including research involving children and mental health research. She also works on ethics and policy issues regarding emerging biotechnologies. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy at Rice University and completed bioethics training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Michaeline Jensen is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at UNC Greensboro. She obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Arizona State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Carolina Consortium on Human Development. Her research leverages novel methods and modern communication technologies to elucidate the role of technology in youth relationship maintenance, mental health, and substance use and to uncover social-communication processes that researchers often struggle to accurately assess via self-report.

Dr. Marina Krcmar (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a professor in the Department of Communication at Wake Forest University. Her research focuses on the uses and effect of media on children and families, with more specific attention on well-being. Her most recent work focuses on social media use and adolescent well-being as well as young children’s moral reasoning and prosocial learning from prosocial programming. She has authored two books and more than 25 book chapters and 100 peer-reviewed articles. In 2023, she was awarded the Senior Scholar Award by the National Communication Association Division of Children and Media.

Michele K. Lewis, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Winston-Salem State University. She is author of Our Biosocial Brains: The Cultural Neuroscience of Bias, Injustice and Power. She also authors a popular professional blog for Psychology Today entitled “Cultural Neuroscience: The Social Life of our Brains.”

Dr. Anna Miller-Fitzwater is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics in General Pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Brenner Children’s Hospital. She provides both direct clinical care and resident supervision in the newborn nursery and outpatient general pediatrics clinic. She has a passion for improving healthcare on a population level through advocacy, quality improvement, care management, and cross-sector community-based initiatives with a particular focus on early childhood and Medicaid. She is Treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Pediatric Society and is the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Early Childhood Champion for North Carolina. Nationally, she is active in the AAP Council on Early Childhood where she is a member of the Executive Committee and co-chair of the Early Literacy Subcommittee.

Dr. Maya Opendak is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her lab studies the specific infant neuroanatomical circuits that generate developmentally-appropriate social behavior and how these systems go awry following adversity. The lab uses state-of-the-art neurobiology techniques during infancy to examine how ethologically-relevant social challenges, such as maltreatment and resource scarcity during infancy, produce profound changes in brain structure and function to modify behavior and identify targets for therapeutics and intervention. In addition to technical innovations, Dr. Opendak’s research team also seeks to improve the translational potential of our work through strong collaborations with clinicians and developmental psychologists.

Dr. Geoff Price is the Executive Director of Digital Learning and Innovation at Belmont University, where he oversees the university’s utilization of academic technology to enhance teaching and learning. In this role, he coordinates Belmont’s instructional design, instructional technology, and instructional media services. Prior to Belmont, Dr. Price taught at Wake Forest University, the University of Alabama and Baylor University. His teaching and research center on the integration of technology and pedagogy to create meaningful and effective learning experiences.

Dr. Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., ABPP is the Chief of Psychology at the American Psychological Association, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he serves as the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Co-Director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development. For over 25 years, and with continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health, Mitch’s research has examined interpersonal models of internalizing symptoms and health risk behaviors among adolescents, with a specific focus on the unique role of off- and on-line peer relationships in the developmental psychopathology of depression and self-injury. He is a board-certified clinical psychologist and has published over 250 scientific manuscripts and 12 books.

Dr. Joseph A. “Joey” Skelton, MD, MS, FAAP, FTOS, DABOM is a Professor of Pediatrics, and of Epidemiology and Prevention, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the Founder and Director of Brenner FIT® (Families In Training), an interdisciplinary pediatric obesity treatment, prevention, research, and educational program. He serves as the Director of the Center for Prevention Science in Child and Family Health, Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Pediatrics, Associate Leader of Community and Stakeholder Engagement at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Childhood Obesity. He is board certified in Pediatrics and Obesity Medicine. His research and clinical work has focused on the treatment of children with obesity. He has secured nearly $10 million in funding over the past 15 years, has given over 50 national and international presentations, and has over 130 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Andrew Smith recently joined the NC General Assembly as a Policy Advisor to the Senate. Previously, Andrew served as the Deputy State Superintendent for Innovation at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. In his role, he supported the development of innovative practices and policies across North Carolina while overseeing the departments of research and evaluation, promising practices, charter schools, learning recovery and acceleration, and the NC Virtual Public School. Before joining NCDPI, Andrew held several administrative roles in Rowan-Salisbury Schools including Assistant Superintendent of Transformation, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, and Director of Innovation. Over the past 15 years, Andrew’s work has focused on scaling educational innovation which has garnered regional and national attention and has been featured by the Hechinger Report, the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences, the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.

Dr. Eva Telzer is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. She is an Associate Editor at Child Development and Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, and the co-director of the Winston Center for Technology and Brain Development. Her research examines how social and cultural processes shape adolescent brain development, with a focus on both prosocial and risk-taking behaviors, family and peer relationships, and the role of social media in youth’s lives. She has authored over 200 publications and has received numerous awards for her work including an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award, an early career award from the Society of Research on Adolescence, a Young Investigator Award from the Flux Congress Society for Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. She is regularly featured as an expert in psychological science in consultation to government agencies and non-profit associations as well as media appearances in The New York Times, NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.