J. Kevin Nugent is the Founder and Director of the Brazelton Institute at Children's Hospital in Boston and is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pediatrics. He is also Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusettes at Amherst.

Dr. Nugent was educated in Ireland and received his doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Boston College. He has worked at the Children's Hospital in Boston with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton since 1978, conducting research on newborn behavior and early parent-infant relations. Dr. Nugent is co-author with Dr. Brazelton, of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, third edition, published by Mac Keith Press, London and has been the director of training on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale since 1978. He and his colleagues have recently developed the CLNBAS - a clinical version of the NBAS - to be used by clinicians in pediatric and intervention settings with infants and parents.

Dr. Nugent is currently working on a longitudinal study on the origins of temperament with Jerome Kagan and T. Berry Brazelton. His other areas of research include the role of fathers in child development, teenage pregnancy, the transition to parenthood, the effects of maternal substance abuse on development, the effects of melatonin on newborn behavior and the effects of the CLNBAS on family functioning and developmental outcome. He conducts research and training in different cultural settings around the world and is the senior editor of the two volume series, The Cultural Context of Infancy, published by Ablex Press. He is a Research Associate at the Children's Hospital Boston, and is also the editor of Ab Initio (www.abinitiointernational.com), the international newsletter of the Brazelton Institute.

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