Dr. Aprile Benner

Aprile Benner is the Project LIBRA principal investigator. She received her PhD in education from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2007. After that, she completed a one-year postdoctoral research position in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She then completed a NICHD-funded Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at UT Austin.

Dr. Benner’s research interests center on adolescent development, investigating how the everyday contexts of young people’s lives — their families, their schools, and their communities — influence their academic performance and their social and emotional well-being. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Education, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Foundation for Child Development.