Richard Wagner, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, is an associate director of the Quantitative Methodology and Innovation Division of FCRR. Dr. Wagner is also an Associate Director of FCRR. Dr. Wagner’s research is focused on the normal acquisition of reading and dyslexia. His body of work has furthered the understanding of phonological processing in relation to learning to read and the development of reading disability. He is the principal investigator of the multidisciplinary Florida Learning Disabilities Research Center funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Yaacov Petscher, Associate Professor of Social Work at Florida State University, is the Director of the Quantitative Methodology and Innovative Division of FCRR. Dr. Petscher is an Associate Director at FCRR and is a Deputy Director of the National Center on Improving Literacy (NCIL), where he leads the Screening and Identification Strand. He is interested in the development and application of statistical models to data in order to understand why students differ in their reading skills, as well as creative disseminations of research through technology and alternative mediums.
Christopher Schatschneider, Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, is an Associate Director of the Quantitative Methodology and Innovative Division of FCRR. Dr. Schatschneider is also an Associate Director of FCRR. Dr. Schatschneider has a strong interest in research design, measurement, and statistical methodology. He is interested in educational psychology, learning disabilities, quantitative methods and research design, and reading and language comprehension.
Sarah O’Dell is the Project Coordinator for the Reach Every Reader project, funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation. Sarah received an MSW in Clinical Social Work with an additional graduate certificate in Cultural Competency in Disaster Recover from Florida State University in 2007. She has since worked at the Florida Center for Reading Research in a variety of roles across projects, and most recently at the FSU College of Medicine, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine studying women’s mental health and child welfare.
Anna Grace Butler is the ReadNet Project Coordinator and one of the Project Coordinators for the Reach Every Reader Project. Anna Grace received her MSW in Clinical Social Work from Florida State University after obtaining her BA in Child Development and Family Studies from Berry College. Anna Grace joined the Florida Center for Reading Research in 2018 as Dr. Yaacov Petscher’s Executive Assistant. She has been on the Reach Every Reader Project since its first year in multiple capacities from Data Collector to Graduate Assistant before joining as faculty in 2023. Her primary research interests include mental health, childhood trauma, and early learning assessment and intervention.
Callie Little is a Research Faculty I member in the Quantitative Methodology and Innovative Division of FCRR. Dr. Little's research involves understanding the development of reading, language and cognitive skills. Within this topic, her research focuses on two primary areas, (a) the individual differences in the development of and associations between cognitive and related behaviors, and (b) geocoding (mapping out what family and school neighborhoods are like) to examine how aspects of the environment might influence patterns of development. Her work involves the application of quantitative genetic analyses, meta-analytic methods, multilevel modeling, geo-coding, and developmental modeling of changes in skills over time.
Dr. Nuria Gutiérrez, Research Faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research, holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from La Laguna University, Spain. She is a member of the Quantitative Methodology and Innovation (QMI) team led by Dr. Yaacov Petscher, and the research group led by Dr. Donald Compton and Dr. Laura Steacy at Florida State University. Dr. Gutiérrez has a strong interest in cognitive neuroscience, learning disabilities, and bilingualism. Her research is mainly focused on early reading difficulties, statistical analysis, and data science.
Ashley Edwards is a Ph.D. student in Developmental Psychology at Florida State University. Her research focuses on dyslexia and reading development. She is specifically interested in the development of reading fluency. Ashley also has interests in methodology and how the use of advanced statistical methods can aid reading research. Learn more at https://aedwards.netlify.app.
Mary J. Walsh, SLPD, CCC-SLP, is an Assistant in Research at Florida State University in the Florida Center for Reading Research. Mary Walsh assists senior research staff with conducting longitudinal research investigations. She has a research interest and professional experience working with students with disabilities in Florida schools, early literacy, inclusion, student access to the general education curriculum, and collaboration with educational professionals at the state and local levels.
AJ Torgesen is a Data Visualization Specialist and Programmer at the Quantitative Methodology and Innovation Division of FCRR. AJ has an interest in using data to tell stories by creating unique and interesting visualizations. He also enjoys developing web applications using the Shiny package in R to help assess reading comprehension and demonstrate literary concepts.
Natalee Escobar
