Catherine Lord
Catherine Lord is the Distinguished Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a Senior Research Scientist in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She completed degrees in psychology at UCLA and Harvard, and a clinical internship at Division TEACCH at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Lord is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialties in diagnosis, social and communication development and intervention in autism spectrum disorders . She is renowned for her work in longitudinal studies of social and communicative development in ASD. She has also been involved in the development of standardized diagnostic instruments for ASD with colleagues from the United Kingdom and the United States, the ADOS, and the ADI-R, now considered the gold standard for research diagnoses all over the world. Dr. Lord was the Chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on the Effectiveness of Early Intervention in Autism and is a member of the DSM5 Neurodevelopmental Disorders Committee. Her areas of interest are in validity and longitudinal studies, early diagnosis of children with autism, regression in children with autism and clinical evaluations and diagnoses of children and adults who may have autism.

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Cynthia Anderson
Cynthia Anderson is the Senior Vice President of Applied Behavior Analysis and Director of the National Autism Center at May Institute in the United States, She received her Ph.D. in Clinical-Child Psychology from West Virginia University. She is a licensed psychologist and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst at the doctoral level. Dr. Anderson’s passion is community-based research, assessing efficacy and effectiveness of assessment and intervention modalities in real-world settings, and identifying adaptations needed to increase sustained, high-quality use. Dr. Anderson’s research is published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, and the Journal of Behavioral Education, and her work has been supported by federal grants from the U.S government for over a decade.

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Dan Phillips
Dan Phillips, is a speech pathologist and assistive technology specialist and the founder and director of the Tech Resource Center Marin, a technology center that served the assistive technology needs of over 4,000 students from the ages of newborn to 22 in northern California for the past 25 years. The center also explores new and innovative technology such as virtual reality, robotics, 3D interface, eye gaze technology, adaptive gaming, and music and art technology and how these tools are relevant to various special needs students. Having previously won highest honors for his work in the field of Speech Pathology as well as Outstanding International Contributions from the American Speech and Hearing Association, he was runner-up for Teacher of the Year for the state of California, the winner of 3 Golden Bell Awards for the state of California for outstanding teaching and was awarded Outstanding National Tech Director from the Edvocate Tech Awards. He is a co-founder of the Nika Project, a non-profit organization that utilizes donated mobile technology tools to teach special education teachers and learners all over the world. This organization was formed in 2013 and now has current projects in Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, Peru, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, and Nigeria. We collaborate with University programs in Speech Pathology, Occupational Therapy, and Special Education. He lectures both nationally and internationally and has been an invited speaker in Australia, South Africa, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UK and Dubai.

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Dinesh K S
Dinesh K S, professor and Head of Department of Ayurveda Paediatrics at Vaidyaratnam P.S.Varier Ayurveda college, Kottakkal, Kerala, India is an evangelist, practitioner and researcher of ayurveda. He started the Ayurveda Center for Autism and Learning Disability Management [AyuCALM] and the Center for Integrated Management of Children with Differential abilities [CIMCD] at the college. He has more than 200 presentations in different national and international conferences to his credit. He is the son of a traditional Ayurveda vaidya and currently leads four research projects in Autism, including a randomized controlled trial to assess the effect of a gut therapy protocol [koshtachikitsa] for managing dysbiosis in children with autism. He is an expert in individualization of Ayurvedic management for Autism.

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Efrat Selanikyo
Efrat Selanikyo is a Lecturer and the Coordinator of Pediatric Studies in the department of occupational therapy at Ono Academic College. She is one of the founders and the Professional Manager of the Roim Rachok program that enables young adults with HF ASD to perform military service in the Israeli intelligence and Air-force and corps. She obtained her Bachelors in Occupational Therapy from the School of Occupational Therapy, Hebrew University and MSc in Occupational Therapy from Tel-Aviv University, and PhD from Hebrew University. She has been working as an Occupational Therapist with children on the Autism Spectrum since 1998., and as an instructor of Occupational Therapists and educational teams in special education schools and preschools. She has been published in internationally recognized journals such as the American journal of Occupational Therapy, Canadian journal of Occupational Therapy, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and presented at numerous international conferences.

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Gagan Joshi
Gagan Joshi is the Director of the Autism Spectrum Disorder Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Medical Director of the Bressler Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Joshi trained in General Psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently completed his Fellowship training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the combined program of the Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He received training in cognitive-behavioral therapy at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute & Society. Dr. Joshi has been the recipient of the prestigious Ethel Dupont Warren Fellowship Award through the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the XXV th Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmalogicum Congress Young Investigators Award, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Pilot Research Award, and the Norma Fine Fellowship (2007 – 2011). Dr. Joshi’s clinical and research interest is in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with particular focus on the often-neglected comorbid conditions associated with these disorders. Besides coordinating Bressler clinic and providing clinical care to individuals of all ages with ASD, Dr. Joshi is facilitating translational clinical research in ASD. At the Bressler Program, in collaboration with the McLean Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and with research support from the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT, Dr. Joshi is conducting research focused on the clinical and neural characterization and psychopharmacotheraputics of ASD and related psychopathology with a particular emphasis on designing neuro-imaging informed pharmacotherapy trials by leveraging state of the art pharmaco-imaging techniques to help identify biomarkers of disease and treatment response. Dr. Joshi shares research updates and expertise in ASD by offering lectures and supervision to trainees in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, and by organizing educational programs for mental health providers and for families of individuals with ASD.

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Gita Gupta
Gita Gupta is a disability advocate, Executive Director of the Anurag and Gita Gupta Foundation and on the board of directors of Communication First. She spent over 20 years in Silicon Valley in senior executive roles in both startups and global Fortune 100 companies, including SAP and Oracle. Ten years ago, she began pursuing her passion to help families find answers to the complex medical symptoms their children experience. She founded and manages a global, online forum aimed at raising awareness of medical co-morbidities in autism, which now has several thousand members worldwide. Ms. Gupta has a special interest in scientific developments surrounding the pathophysiology of autism. Through the foundation, she helps fund research in the pathophysiology of autism and also supports education initiatives that help non-verbal children with autism access an age-appropriate education. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and son.

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Joan Surfus
Joan Surfus has been practicing in pediatrics for over 25 years. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University and her Master’s and Clinical Doctorate from Misericordia University. Dr. Surfus is the Clinical Coordinator of Occupational Therapy and feeding specialist at Pediatric Therapy Network in Torrance, California. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy in the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, teaching Dysphagia Across the Lifespan: Pediatrics through Geriatrics, as well as the Sensory Integration Clinical Training Program. Her focus has been in pediatric intervention with an emphasis in feeding, oral-motor and dysphagia, sensory integration, and autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Surfus teaches regularly in these areas at the local, national, and international level. When not working, she spends her free time volunteering abroad, providing services for children with special needs and training staff at a school in Honduras and volunteer teaching in Russia with Naked Heart Foundation.

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Lauren Weeks
Lauren Weeks is the Founder and Director of The FUSE Program and FUSE Preschool. She is a licensed clinical child psychologist specializing in children with social challenges. Lauren received a BA in elementary education for children with special needs. After completing her Doctorate in child psychology, she trained for three years at Tufts Medical Center, Center for Children with Special Needs under a neuropsychologist and developmental-behavioral pediatrician. She then opened her own private practice working with children and their families and consulting for schools. She then attained her certification in Relationship Development Intervention (RDI). After many years of consulting for schools she decided to open her own to integrate approaches and better serve children with social challenges.

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Ajit Moorkoth
Ajit Sacheendran Moorkoth is a Professional Rehabilitation Practitioner, Special Educator, Educational Diagnostician, and Psychologist, with training from India and Australia. He has twenty eight years of professional experience with interests in inclusion and school reform. Ajit’s key interests and skills include Personnel Preparation in Special and Inclusive Education, School Reform Practices, Special Education, Inclusion, Early Intervention Services, Positive Behaviour Intervention and Support, and Educational Diagnostics. Currently, Ajit is the Autism Program Head at the Dubai Autism Center, Dubai. He is also an Adjunct Consultant in an educational assessment and intervention clinic for children with learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorders in Cochin, Kerala, India. Ajit has a bachelor’s degree from NIMH, Secunderabad where he specialized in intellectual disability and interned in early intervention for high and at – risk newborns and toddlers, and a M.Ed. in Special Education from the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, specializing in learning disabilities, behaviour disorders, and gifted and talented children.

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Pavan Antony
Dr. Pavan John Antony is an Associate Professor of Special Education at College of Education and Health Sciences at Adelphi University in New York, US. He earned his doctorate degree from Washington State University (WSU) and has been teaching at Adelphi University for the past nine years. He has been actively involved in national and international research focused on the education and inclusion of children with disabilities. He has published several peer reviewed articles, contributed to book chapters and is also the author of two books. One of his recent co- edited book focuses on the college experiences of students with different disabilities. He is an expert on topics related to disability, transition, inclusion, cultural diversity, understanding families from culturally diverse background, bullying to name a few.

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Naveen Nagarajan
Naveen Nagarajan is Postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Dr. Mario Capecchi at the Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah. His work is focused to the investigation of neural circuit and cellular mechanism underlying microglia-neuronal interaction in repetitive type of Autistic behaviors using multidisciplinary neuroscience approaches that include genetics, optogenetics, miniature fluorescence endoscopy, electrophysiological and computational approaches. Dr. Nagarajan received his PhD in Chemistry with specialization in Biophysics and Neuroscience from the Department of Membrane Biophysics, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical chemistry, Goettingen, Germany under the able guidance of Dr. Christian Rosenmund and Dr. Erwin Neher. He did a postdoctoral fellowship in cellular neuroscience in Mark Bear’s lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and systems neuroscience at the Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco with Dr. Michael Merzenich. He joined Dr. Mario Capecchi’s laboratory as a Postdoctoral associate in 2009 to investigate the role of Hoxb8 gene function in repetitive, anxiety and social behavioral functions in Hoxb8 mutant mouse model of Autistic repetitive behaviors. Combining functional magnetic resonance imaging and whole brain imaging techniques in conjunction with electron microscopy and electrophysiological approaches, Dr. Nagarajan and Dr. Capecchi discovered corticostriatal circuit defect in Hoxb8 mutants. Unlike mutations in other neuronal genes that lead to repetitive autistic behaviors, Hoxb8 gene is exclusively expressed in 30% of the brain microglia. Using optogenetics and miniature endofluorescence imaging techniques the team for the first time discovered that the optogenetic stimulation of Hoxb8 microglia could induce repetitive grooming type of Autistic behavior in control mouse. This resulted in a paradigm shift on how brain utilizes unique microglial function and capabilities to generate specific behaviors in circuit dependent and cell specific fashion. These studies provide a novel research direction and insights to unravel the mechanisms of microglia-neuronal communication in Autistic behaviors. The communicative signals between the brain’s immune cell and neural circuit is the first of its kind that will lead to the elucidation of how mutations in immune cell and the response of the neural circuit and the brain environment directly impacts the cognitive, emotional and social function of an Autistic brain.

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Ralph Sperry
Dr. Sperry is a Board Certified Clinical Psychologist. He currently is the Chief of Clinical Services at the Boston Higashi International School for Autism. Previously he was Chief Operating Officer of the May Institute and the National Autism Center. He serves as an autism expert on the International Speakers Bureau of the US State Department and is a reviewer for the research for National Clearinghouse for Evidence Based Practices at the University of North Carolina. In recent years he has worked with the governments of China, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Qatar to develop autism services. He has a strong interest in globally promoting evidence based autism practices.

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Tracy Vail
Tracy Vail is the co-owner of Let’s Talk Speech and Language Services, Inc. She obtained her BS in Psychology and Speech/Theatre from Frostburg State College and MS in Speech/Language Pathology from West Virginia University. She also obtained 56 doctoral credits in the areas of Early Intervention and Learning Disabilities from the same institution. She has post graduate training in the use of the DIR model (Floortime), TEACCH, Verbal Behavior, ABA, PECS, PROMPT and RDI. Tracy has been working with children on the Autism Spectrum since 1982 in a variety of settings including public schools, private schools and private practice. She served as the President of the North Carolina Speech-Hearing-Language Association and was on the Board of Directors that started The Mariposa School for Children with Autism. She also wrote the initial training manual for instructors and parents of the school. Tracy is a certified Crisis Prevention Intervention Instructor and a certified PCM Safety Care Instructor. In addition to her clinical work with children, she travels around the country and world-wide providing training and consultations for parents, teachers, organizations and school systems to increase their effectiveness in treating children with Autism.

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Vinod Menon
Vinod Menon is the Rachel L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and, Professor, by courtesy, of Neurology at Stanford University. He serves as director of Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory. His lab is dedicated to the investigation of human brain function and dysfunction using a multidisciplinary approach that emphasizes a tight integration of cognitive, behavioral, neuroscience and computational methodologies. Prof. Menon received his BS (Honors) in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology and his PhD in computer science from the University of Texas, Austin. He did a postdoctoral fellowship in neurophysiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He came to Stanford University as a Sinclair Foundation Research Fellow and joined the faculty in 2000. Leveraging expertise in neuroscience, statistics, engineering, computer science, psychology, psychiatry, and neurology, Dr. Menon and his team were among the first to discover that the human brain is organized into specialized and interacting networks of brain regions, which has resulted in a paradigm shift in how we investigate human brain function and cognition. Virtually every psychiatric and neurological disorder has been probed with the scientific framework Dr. Menon and his team first developed. This included the discovery of the default mode and salience networks in the brain, which have led to elucidation of how deficits in access, engagement and disengagement of large-scale brain networks play a prominent role in psychopathology, providing novel insights into brain mechanisms underlying cognitive, affective, and social function and dysfunction that cut across multiple neurological and psychiatric disorders.

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