Lawrence fung, md, phd

President 

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Dr. Lawrence Fung is a scientist and psychiatrist specialized in autism, and the father of a teenager on the autism spectrum. He is the director of the Stanford Neurodiversity Project, which strives to uncover the strengths of neurodiverse individuals and utilize their talents to increase innovation and productivity of the society as a whole. He directs the Neurodiverse Student Support Program, Neurodiversity at Work Program, and Adult Neurodevelopment Clinic at Stanford. Dr. Fung is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His lab advances the understanding of neural bases of human socio-communicative and cognitive functions by using novel neuroimaging and technologies. His team devises and implements novel interventions to improve the lives of neurodiverse individuals by maximizing their potential and productivity. He is currently conducting a study to demonstrate that specialized employment programs such as Neurodiversity at Work program will result in higher retention rates and quality of life.

REnee wachtel, md

Treasurer and Secretary

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Dr. Renee C. Wachtel is a Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician and a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF. She has been involved in autism research over many years, including investigating potential metabolic causes for autism and early detection of autism.  She teaches pediatric residents from UCSF and is an advocate for children with special needs at the state and local level. She has worked with the pediatric community to recognize the important role of pediatric providers in the screening of children in their practices for developmental delays and behavioral issues that impact the child and their family. She has worked with many vulnerable and at-risk populations and has many years of experience with community supports for children and their families with developmental disabilities.

mARJORIE Solomon, phd

Board Member

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Dr. Marjorie Solomon is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the MIND Institute. She holds a PhD in Psychology from UC Berkeley, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She also is a licensed clinician with a broad background in clinical assessment and psychosocial intervention for autistic individuals without intellectual disability, and received an NIMH Career Development Award to learn cognitive neuroscience methods including fMRI to study higher cognition though the lifespan in these individuals. From 2012-2012, Solomon served as an appointee of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC). She was the Interim Director of the UC Davis Imaging Research Center (IRC) from October 2016 to July 2018. She also is Interim Director of the MIND Institute and co-Director of MIND Institute’s NIMH funded T-32, the Autism Research Training Program (ARTP).

Solomon’s research examines cognitive development in autistic individuals through the lifespan using neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience methods including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She currently is funded by NIMH to use the Autism Phenome Project (APP) longitudinal cohort to examine intellectual development and cognitive functioning between middle childhood and adolescence (ages 8-18) and to examine the emergence of depression in these individuals during this time.

joachim hallmayer, md

Board Member

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Dr. Joachim Hallmayer is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University and a member of Stanford Bio-X, the Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. ​A main focus of Dr. Hallmayer's research is to find genetic markers linked to autism and pervasive developmental disorders. A second research focus is to resolve the heterogeneity of clinical phenotypes such as schizophrenia into genetically simpler, quantifiable components, thus facilitating the search for susceptibility genes for these disorders. Several phenotypes that have been reported to correlate with clinical schizophrenia are currently being studied. These include neurocognitive variables such as sustained attention and a number of event-related potentials such as mismatch negativity, MMN.

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lauren weiss, phd

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Board Member

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Dr. Lauren Weiss earned her BS in Human Genetics from the University of Michigan, where she began studying the genetics of autism in the lab of Dr. Miriam Meisler.  She received her Ph.D. in Human Genetics from The University of Chicago, where she worked with Dr. Carole Ober and Dr. Ed Cook, Jr.  Her postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics was carried out in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital/Broad Institute (Harvard/MIT) with Dr. Pamela Sklar and Dr. Mark Daly.  She joined the faculty of UCSF as a Staglin Family/IMHRO Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Institute for Human Genetics in 2008. Her research focuses on understanding the genetic architecture of autism - working with genome-wide genetic data to identify additional susceptibility loci, the genetic mechanisms by which DNA variants influence autism risk, and the genetic and physiological pathways these risk loci implicate, with long term goals to use genetic tools to improve understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of autism and related traits.

James McCauley, PhD

Board Member

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Dr. James McCauley is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Saint Mary's College of California. He got his M.S. in Child Development and Ph.D. in Human Development at UC Davis, training at the UC Davis MIND Institute with a focus on family interactions and observational methods. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment for Dr. Cathy Lord, working on a longitudinal study of autistic adults. His research interests center on studies of autistic adults with varying cognitive ability levels, with a focus on quality of life and the life experiences and family processes that influence more positive outcomes. One of the goals of his current research is to better understand how to measure well-being for individuals with autism and intellectual disability using observational and qualitative methods.

somer bishop, phd

Board Member

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Dr. Somer Bishop is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Bishop’s research and clinical interests focus on the assessment of social-communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and how these symptom dimensions are affected by individual and contextual factors across the lifespan. Dr. Bishop’s research is focused on identifying and refining dimensional measures of ASD-related behavior. She is interested in developing tools that can be used in both clinical and research settings to assess profiles of social-communicative and other behavioral strengths and challenges across development in varied clinical populations (e.g., ASD, intellectual disability, ADHD). Another line of research focuses on promoting psychological health and well-being among adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum, with a particular focus on understanding the impact of positive and negative social experiences on depressive symptoms. Her work has been funded by NIH, HRSA, DoD, the Autism Science Foundation, and the Simons Foundation. She has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and she serves on multiple journal editorial boards and grant review panels. At the UCSF Center for ASDs and NDDs, Dr. Bishop participates in comprehensive, multi-disciplinary assessment and treatment of children and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders. She directs the diagnostic training program, conducting multiple-day trainings on widely used autism diagnostic tools and best diagnostic practices for professionals from all over the world. 

JENNIFER AMES, phd

Board Member

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Jennifer Ames is a staff scientist in the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. Dr. Ames research interests include the delivery of healthcare services to autistic individuals across the lifespan and the interplay of genetic and environmental factors in the etiology of autism. Her current studies focus on improving the transition from pediatric to adult care for autistic youth and addressing disparities in reproductive health care services in autistic women and gender-diverse adults. One of the overarching goals of this research is to improve access to inclusive and neurodivergent-competent healthcare for people with autism and other developmental disabilities.

Dr Ames is also applying novel methods in polygenic and complex environmental mixtures modeling to better understand how interactions between prenatal exposures to multiple endocrine-disrupting chemicals and genetic variation in specific genes may influence neurodevelopment. She enjoys working with multidisciplinary settings, with collaborators in environmental health, biostatistics, immunology, and genetics.