About

FTRG Consulting was established by Richard E. Heyman, Ph.D. and Amy M. Smith Slep, Ph.D. to provide research solutions for family well being.

Dr. Richard E. Heyman

Richard E. Heyman, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist, is co-director of the Family Translational Research Group (FTRG) and professor in the Faculty of Health at New York University. Dr. Heyman has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than 50 grants/contracts from Federal funders, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and U.S. Department of Defense. He is the author of more than 150 publications in scientific journals and scientific books. Dr. Heyman’s research program has focused on the development and maintenance of family problems, with a strong focus on family maltreatment and relationship distress.

Dr. Heyman has a long history of developing and testing interventions for couples and families. Among this published work or that currently receiving grant support for development are (1) couples approaches for the treatment of IPV; (2) couples interventions for new parents (the Couple CARE for Parents of Newborns and Couple CARE for Parents of Toddlers programs); (3) evidence-guided framework for community prevention of secretive problems (partner and child maltreatment; suicidality; alcohol abuse and drug misuse; NORTH STAR in military communities; POLARIS in university communities); and (4) stepped interventions (i.e., at different levels of intensity of intervention) for couples.

Dr. Amy M. Smith Slep

Amy M. Smith Slep received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Stony Brook University in 1995. She is now Professor in the Department of Cariology and Comprehensive Care at NYU. Along with her collaborator, she co-directs the Family Translational Research Group, which comprises an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on understanding violence in families. Dr. Slep’s research focuses on many different aspects of conflict and violence in relationships and families families: the development of dysfunctional parenting, the connections between parenting and partner conflict, the dynamics of conflict escalation and de-escalation in productive and destructive conflicts, what facets of exposure to violence impact children’s functioning and how these impacts can be buffered, and how to best prevent family violence. She is also focused on how communities can promote healthy relationship and improve population risk profiles. Her work on definitions of maltreatment has resulted in definitions that are now being used throughout the U.S. military, are being implemented across the state of Alaska, have influenced the DSM, and are being considered for the ICD-11. She has overseen a number of community-based prevention trials and longitudinal studies of representative samples. She has published over 100 scientific articles and book chapters and has received more 50 federal research grants to support her work. She is a licensed clinical psychologist.