Wayne State University psychology Professor Melissa Kaplan-Estrin has been awarded the Selma Fraiberg award for her contributions in service to infants and families through her work with Wayne State's Merrill-Palmer Institute.

Kaplan-Estrin received the Fraiberg award at the recent Michigan-Association of Infant Mental Health Conference held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The award is named after Fraiberg, who is credited with pioneering relationship-based research and clinical services to infants and their families.

Kaplan-Estrin has been a professor with Wayne State since 1970. She specializes in infant developmental psychology research and is a faculty member affiliated with Merrill-Palmer's Graduate Certificate Program in Infant Mental Health.

Merrill-Palmer's Infant Mental Health Program, established in 1989, includes an intervention service as well as an interdisciplinary training program to prepare graduate students and professionals from social work, psychology, nursing and education who wish to work with infants with special needs or at-risk for delays, dysfunction, abuse or neglect and with their families. It was the first graduate training program in infant mental health in the United States.

Kaplan-Estrin, who resides in Huntington Woods, has a bachelor's from University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Ph.D. from University of Illinois-Urbana.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 14 schools and colleges to more than 31,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.

NOTE: Kaplan-Estrin photo is available by e-mail. Contact abridgeforth@dmac.wayne.edu