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Clelia Aherns-Barbeau
Lab Manager
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Kathleen Campbell
MRI Laboratory Assistant
Ms. Campbell received her bachelor's degree in molecular and cell biology with an emphasis in neurobiology at UC Berkeley in 2008. She became interested in autism while volunteering as a treatment provider in an early intervention program for infants on the autism spectrum.
She collects MRI scans on subjects while they sleep, and processes the images of their brains at the lab. Her research focuses on measuring the brain from structural scans.
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Cindy Carter, PhD
Research Psychologist
Dr. Carter has been the Research Psychologist at the Center for Autism Research since early 2004, and has worked with children with autism and their families for 13 years. Before joining the Courchesne Laboratory, she served as the Director for Children's Hospital's Autism Intervention Center.
Dr. Carter received her master's and doctorate in educational psychology from the UC Santa Barbara in 2000, where she was trained in the Koegel Autism Center under the renowned autism treatment researcher, Robert Koegel.
She conducts the developmental and psychological evaluations of the individuals participating in our research and assigns diagnoses to the participants. She also is in charge of making sure our studies are in compliance with University and Hospital Human Protections Program regulations.
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Anders Dale, PhD, founding Co-Director of the Multimodal Imaging Laboratory, an interdisciplinary initiative of the Departments of Neurosciences and Radiology. He is highly skilled in the development and utilization of multimodality imaging technologies.
Within both departments, Dr. Dale is the designated point person for integrating the various modes and methods of collecting imaging data, including functional MRI (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG), and optical imaging.
His efforts are directed in three areas: continuing development and refinement of accurate and automated algorithms for evaluation subjects using multimodality approaches to data collection; statistical analysis of data; and conducting studies in animal models using optical imaging, high field fMRI, and electrophysiological recordings to enhance the interpretation of neuroimaging studies.
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Ilan Dinstein
Postdoc
Ilan Distein received his PhD in Neuroscience at NYU in 2009.
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Lisa T. Eyler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Dr. Eyler is a clinical research psychologist who joined the Autism Center of Excellence in 2007. The focus of her research is exploring the structure and function of the brain in individuals across the lifespan. She is particularly interested in the effects of neuropsychiatric disorders and age, and on relating cognitive performance to brain measures. Her previous studies have examined brain function using functional magnetic resonance imaging in adults and seniors with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She has also studied the normal aging process using functional and structural MRI.
Dr. Eyler is author or co-author of over 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts, serves as reviewer or triage editor for numerous scientific journals, and presents her work regularly at national meetings. Her research has been funded by the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression, the West Coast College of Biological Psychiatry, and the VA Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center. Dr. Eyler mentors graduate students in clinical psychology and serves as the director of a post-doctoral fellowship program for psychologists at the San Diego VA Medical Center.
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Fred Gage, PhD, one of the co-directors of the Autism Center’s Gene Association Project, is a world-recognized neuroscientist. He is a professor and director of the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and professor in the Department of Neurosciences at UCSD.
Dr. Gage is an expert on neural stem cells, as well as the understanding and treatment of some of the most devastating neurological disorders. He has received many major national and international honors and prizes for his work, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and election as president of the Society for Neurosciences.
Of relevance to his role in the Center, his laboratory, in a study published in Nature, identified the Wnt pathway as critical for adult hippocampal neurogenesis. In addition, Gage’s laboratory has recently used small molecule libraries to screen for compounds that alter neural stem cell phenotypes.
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Nicole Gallagher
Clinical Coordinator/Administration
Ms. Gallagher received her B.A. in 2009, in psychology and human development. She is interested in the promotion of public health as it applies to healthy development throughout the life span. She assists the lab with laboratory coordination, administrative functions, and serves as a pediatrician liaison.
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Stephen Glatt, PhD, is the leader of the UCSD Autism Center’s Gene Expression Project. The project will identify abnormal levels of genetic activity in infants and toddlers with autism that may be related to abnormal clinical and brain growth and function; abnormal gene expression profiles may signal a risk for autism in infants. He is an assistant professor at the SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY.
Dr. Glatt is an expert in psychiatric genetics, especially in the design and analysis of gene expression studies. He has published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Genomics, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, and Nature Biotechnology.
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Roxana Hazin
Clinical Coordinator
Ms. Hazin received her B.S. in cognitive science with emphasis in neuroscience and a minor in biology from UCSD in 2008. She plays an integral role in many areas of the lab including working with families, pediatricians, and research assistants, and she assists with the majority of the Center’s clinical data.
Her interest in both the brain and clinical work brought her to the ACE where she is able to explore them. She plans to further her education in a related field.
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Linda Lopez
Pediatric Phlebotomist
Ms. Lopez has 12+ years experience as a phlebotomist and also spends her time assisting the psychologists and working with our Spanish speaking families.
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Steven Marinero
MRI Laboratory Assistant
Mr. Marinero majored in Physiology and Neuroscience at UCSD. He is part of the MRI scan team, collecting scans and analyzing the data. He is also involved in the collection and analysis of eye tracking data. His primary interests include integrating diffusion tensor imaging with eye-tracking and he plans to further his education in a related field.
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Maisi Mayo
MRI Laboratory Assistant
Ms. Mayo obtained her B.A. in psychology in 2009. She is interested in neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and structural MRI to identify brain structures that are abnormal at infancy in autism.
Her previous research experience includes UCLA's Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, where she was able to work on studies investigating neural correlates of attitude behavior change and effects of early-life stress on brain development.
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Sunny Pence
Clinical Coordinator
Ms. Pence graduated Cum Laude from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in psychology and specializing in physiological psychology. She is interested in the neurological correlates of behavior in ASD and is currently finishing her Master’s degree in psychological research from SFSU. At the lab she is involved in directly coordinating aspects of the clinical team such as overseeing student research assistants and working with families.
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Laura Schreibman, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Autism Research Program at UC San Diego, will head up the UCSD Autism Centers’ Treatment Response Core of the Autism Center for Excellence.
With more than 30 years’ experience in the behavioral treatment and experimental analysis of autism, Schreibman is one of the world’s leading authorities in the field. She is the author of many books on autism, most recently, “The Science and Fiction of Autism” (Harvard UP, 2005).
The Treatment Response Core will provide one year of intensive behavioral modification therapy to children identified as high-risk for developing autism. Beginning when they are 24 months old, the children will receive 15 hours per week of free, state-of-the-art therapy, individualized to the child’s needs and aimed at improving their social, communication and other developmental skills.
The children will be assessed again at 36 months to determine who benefited most and if there are physiological correlates that would be helpful in the future for identifying the best-fit intervention from the start.
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Nicholas J. Schork, PhD, is one of the world’s experts on gene variation and sophisticated statistical methodology to analyze phenotype-genotype interactions, and has published in Science, Genomics, American Journal of Human Genetics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Schork is the director of the Autism Center’s Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core and the co-director of the Center’s Gene Association Project. He is currently Director of Research at Scripps Genomic Medicine, Professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at TSRI and Adjunct Professor of the Center for Human Genetics and Genomics at UCSD.
Dr. Schork is currently developing methods for analyzing large integrated genomic data sets and his Center Core in collaboration with other Project and Core directors will identify the clinical and biological signatures of autism at 12 months of age.
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Stephanie Solso
MRI Laboratory Assistant
Ms. Solso graduated from UCSD in 2009 with a cognitive science degree. At the lab she is part of the MRI scan team, collecting scans on all of the babies seen in the clinic and analyzing the data. Her main focus is assisting Drs. Pierce and Eyler with the function images as well as analyzing the diffusion tensor images that are collected.
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Stuart J. Spendlove, PhD
Bilingual Research Psychologist
Dr. Spendlove was hired as the Bilingual Research Psychologist for the Autism Center of Excellence in July 2009, a position funded by cooperation with the National Foundation for Autism Research (NFAR). He has worked with Spanish speaking children and families with a variety of disorders for nearly 10 years.
Before joining the Courchesne Laboratory, he completed a one-year clinical internship with the UCSD/VA Psychology Internship Consortium working at Rady Children's Hospital's Outpatient Psychiatry and UCSD Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services.
Dr. Stuart received his master's and doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Texas Tech University in 2006 and 2009 respectively, where he completed research studies and clinical work with Latino youth and families along with his advisor Joaquin Borrego, Jr., PhD; a researcher of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and ethnic minority topics.
He is responsible for conducting the developmental and psychological evaluations of all Spanish speaking individuals participating in our research studies and assisting Spanish speaking families during MRI scans.
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Ming Tsuang, MD, PhD. has investigated the genetic and environmental determinants of mental and behavioral disorders for over three decades, including several gene expression studies.
Dr. Tsuang is currently appointed Endowed Chair in Behavioral Genomics and University Professor, University of California; Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, and Director, Center for Behavioral Genomics with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.
He also directs the Harvard Institute of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Genetics in Boston, MA. He received his M.D. degree from National Taiwan University and his Ph.D. and D.Sc. (Doctor of Science) in Psychiatric Epidemiology and Genetics from the University of London.
He has been recognized worldwide for his research in schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, and substance abuse. One of his areas of interest is in the interactions between genetic and environmental risk factors for severe mental disorders. His current effort is to study prevention of psychiatric disorders before their onset, particularly in blood relatives of people with schizophrenia, and to identify traits that predispose a person to developing schizophrenia from both genetic and environmental perspectives.
Another area of interest is developing and validating gene-based biomarkers for major mental illnesses, which may ultimately facilitate the development of effective early identification, intervention, and prevention protocols.
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Anthony Wynshaw-Boris MD, PhD, is the Charles J. Epstein Professor of Human Genetics and Pediatrics, as well as Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics at UCSF School of Medicine. His laboratory studies the pathophysiological mechanisms for human neurogenetic disorders, using primarily animal models.
Dr. Wynshaw-Boris's laboratory defined the mechanism of action of genes responsible for human neurogenesis and neuronal migration defects, determined components of the major pathways through which these genes act, and designed novel potential therapies for human patients using information from mutant mice.
In addition, his laboratory was the first to produce mice with mutations in each of the three Dishevelled genes and they defined single, double and triple mutant phenotypes. Notably, Dishevelled-1 (Dvl1) mutant mice were the first mice found to display mammalian social behavior defects, and are models for human neuropsychiatric diseases such as autism.
These animal studies have led to his involvement in the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence to study human patients with autism under the hypothesis that autism may be the result of brain overgrowth due to problems with neurogenesis and/or neuronal migration.
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Julia Young
MRI Laboratory Assistant
Ms. Young completed her B.S. in Biopsychology with a minor in Global Peace and Security at UC Santa Barbara. As part of the MRI team, she assists in infant sleep scans, processes the structural images, and can be found interacting closely with families in the clinic. Her role involves investigating brain behavior relationships of autism in infancy.
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