Dr. Kelly Rulison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Education at UNC Greensboro and a Faculty Affiliate for the Institute to Promote Athlete Health & Wellness. Dr. Rulison's interdisciplinary training includes an Undergraduate Degree in Psychology from the University of Rochester, a Master's and Doctoral Degree in Human Development and Family Studies, a Master's degree in Applied Statistics from The Pennsylvania State University, and a two-year pre-doctoral research fellowship as part of Penn State University’s Prevention and Methodology Training program. Broadly, her research focuses on the dynamic social processes and contexts that shape the development of health-risk behaviors during adolescence. At the same time, adolescents spend increasingly more time with their peers in unsupervised settings and the nature of these peer relationships changes. Dr. Rulison's research centers around three inter-related themes. These three themes, which draw on her training in human development, statistical methodology, and prevention science, are: (1) clarifying the role that peers play in the development of health-risk behaviors; (2) applying innovative methods to study how different levels of the peer context interact to shape the development of health-risk behaviors; and (3) exploring how we can optimize interventions to better promote the diffusion of healthy attitudes and behaviors and reduce the diffusion of health-risk behaviors.