Dr. Waasdorp is a Research Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of Research for School-Based Bullying and Social Emotional Learning for the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her research focuses on aggression and bullying, as well as the design and assessment of school-based interventions related to reducing bullying and aggression and improving children’s social and emotional skills. At CHOP, she leads the evaluation of three school-based interventions, Preventing Relational Aggression Every day (PRAISE), Friend to Friend (F2F) and the Bullying Classroom Check-up (BCCU). PRAISE and F2F are aimed at reducing aggression and bullying for urban elementary school youth. BCCU is a program that addresses bullying using an innovative, transportable training simulator combined with an evidence-based teacher-coaching model, to increase teachers’ prevention, detection, and responses to bullying. These programs are part of CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention. She also focuses on cyberbullying and building children’s social and emotional skills.  

Dr. Waasdorp publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts on school-based bullying prevention/intervention, forms of bullying and victimization, children’s coping with bullying, teachers’ and parents’ responses to bullying, positive social and emotional development, and the impact of a school’s climate on a child’s development. She also has authored a book for teachers on bullying prevention as well as numerous book chapters on bullying and cyberbullying.