Dr. Philip Fisher is the Diana Chen Professor of Early Childhood Learning in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, where he serves as founding Director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. He is a Courtesy Professor of Pediatrics at the Stanford School of Medicine. He has been a member of the ZERO TO THREE Board of Directors since 2025.
Contributions to the Field
Dr. Fisher’s research, which has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies since 1999, focuses on the developmental neuroscience of early life adversity, strengthening community-based early childhood systems to ensure that all children thrive from the start, and developing tools and identifying pathways to accelerate the pace of early childhood research.
He is particularly interested in prevention and programs that improve children’s relationships with caregivers and peers, social-emotional development, and academic achievement. He developed several widely implemented, evidence-based interventions that support healthy child development in the context of social and economic adversity, including Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Preschoolers (TFCO-P), Kids in Transition to School (KITS), and Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND).
Dr. Fisher is also the lead investigator for the ongoing RAPID-EC project, a national survey on the well-being of households with young children. He has published more than 200 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Affiliations
- Diana Chen Professor of Early Childhood Learning, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
- Director, Stanford Center on Early Childhood
- Courtesy Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine
- Co-Faculty Director, Stanford Accelerator for Learning, Stanford University
- Affiliated Faculty Member, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Current Research
Dr. Fisher is working on the Cambridge Handbook of New Ecology on Early Childhood.
Recognition and Thought Leadership
- 2012 Recipient of the Society for Prevention Research Translational Science Award
- 2019 Fellow of the American Psychological Society
