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Rainer K. Silbereisen is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Developmental Psychology at the University of Jena (Germany), Director of the Center for Applied Developmental Science, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate School on Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change, Adjunct Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University (USA). He is member of the Board of Governors of the University of Haifa. Prior to his current duties he held faculty positions as Professor at the Technical University of Berlin, the University of Giessen (Germany) and the Pennsylvania State University (USA). He was Chair of the Board of a large government-funded company offering infrastructural services for the social sciences in Germany and abroad (GESIS). His scientific work has been honored by membership of the European Academy of Sciences (Academia Europaea, London, UK), and of the Akademie gemeinnuetziger Wissenschaften, Erfurt (Germany). He also received the Fellow Award of the American Psychological Association. His main interests concern basic and applied research on human development across the life-span, often conducted in a cross-national and cross-cultural format, and consequently have meant a high level of international collaboration. Many research topics are rooted in social problems and the results are relevant for social policy-making and intervention programs. The theoretical framework focuses on dynamic interactionism, stressing the combined role of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural determinants in human development. Topics are problem behaviors in adolescence and their prevention, the effects of early adversities on the timing of psychosocial transitions, the impact of social change on transitions to adulthood, acculturation among immigrants, development and promotion of entrepreneurial behaviors, life-planning among the elderly, and biobehavioral aspects of adolescent development. His most recent focus has been on several large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal studies comparing adolescent and young adult development in Germany over the years since unification, currently being extended to include older age-groups and other societies under the influence of political transformation and economic globalization. The research was funded continuously and substantially by numerous national and international foundations, and by many state and federal governmental agencies and research authorities in Germany. He is a member of a decade-long interdisciplinary research consortium on the social and political transformations in Germany (funded by the German National Science Foundation), and also chairs a large international research network on acculturation of immigrants (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) with research sites in Germany and Israel. His publication list entails more than 20 edited books and more than 300 chapters and research papers. He is currently Editor of the European Psychologists and was Editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Development and Co-Editor of Developmental Psychopathology. He was for many years Co-Chair of the review board for psychology of the German National Science Foundation, and has been involved in regular review and consulting activities for numerous scientific journals, foundations, and government bodies worldwide, including evaluation of scientific institutions and programs abroad. He is President of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), was President of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), and was Member of the Executive Council of the European Federation of Psychologists Associations (EFPA). He was President of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) and of the Federation of German Psychological Associations. In addition, he has held officer and committee positions at various international learned societies. His strong commitment to the promotion of young scientists received substantial financial support from scientific foundations, such as the Jacobs Foundation, Switzerland. For more than a decade he has been active in providing research grants to young scholars in the Majority World and Eastern European countries. Recently, he also became Co-Director of the new International Post-doctoral Fellowship Program on Productive Youth Development, with training sites in the UK, Scandinavia, USA, and Germany.
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