Benita Blachman, Trustee Professor of Education and Psychology, is a specialist in reading and learning disabilities. Her research, supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), focuses on factors that predict reading achievement and on early intervention to prevent reading failure. She completed an investigation of the influence of intensive reading instruction on patterns of brain activation in young poor readers, reporting the results in the scientific journals Biological Psychiatry and the Journal of Educational Psychology. She is the author of the popular, evidence-based program for kindergarten children titled Road to the Code: A Phonological Awareness Program for Young Children. Her research was widely cited in the National Reading Panel Report (2000) that helped to establish an evidence-based model for early reading intervention. She serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Educational Psychology and Scientific Studies of Reading and on the scientific advisory board for the National Dyslexia Research Foundation.