Virginia C. Salo, Ph.D.

Virginia C. Salo, Ph.D., became a program director with CDBB in 2023. She manages the branch’s Language Development and Multilingualism Program. Prior to joining NICHD, Dr. Salo was a Society for Research in Child Development/American Association for the Advancement of Science Federal Executive Branch Policy Fellow. Her research examined how caregiver–child interactions develop and predict individual differences in children’s social-cognitive and language development, with a focus on preverbal infant communication, neural mechanisms supporting language development, and identification of modifiable targets for intervention.

Dr. Salo completed an NIH National Research Service Award F32 postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University and earned a Ph.D. in human development from the University of Maryland, an M.S. in psychology from Villanova University, and a B.A. in public relations and psychology from Syracuse University.