UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, will be the 2015 Bennett Lecturer in Prevention Science.

His lecture, “Improving Quality in Early Childhood Education in the Context of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals,” will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29, in the Ruth Pike Auditorium, 22 Biobehavioral Health Building, on the University Park campus. The lecture is sponsored by the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center through the Bennett Endowment to the center.

Yoshikawa is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He has also conducted research on culture, sexuality, and youth and young adult development in the contexts of HIV/AIDS risk and prevention and gay/straight alliances. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and several foundations.

He currently serves on the leadership council and as the co-chair of the early childhood development and education workgroup of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the research and technical group advising the secretary-general on the post-2015 global development goals.

Yoshikawa has also served on the Board on Children, Youth and Families of the National Academy of Sciences, the Early Childhood Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Development Bank, and the DHHS Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation for both the Clinton and Obama Administrations.

In 2012, he was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a member of the National Board for Education Sciences. In 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Education. He currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society, the National Academy of Sciences Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally, and the boards of the Russell Sage Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report, and the Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Development Program.

Recent Bennett Lecturers have included Matthew Sanders, professor of clinical psychology and director of the Parenting and Family Support Centre, University of Queensland, Australia; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons; Nancy Gonzales, ASU Foundation Professor and Director of the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University; and Philip Fisher, professor of psychology, University of Oregon.