Dr. Marsha Mailick, Emeritus Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The focus of Dr. Mailick’s research is on the life course trajectory of developmental disabilities. She is interested in how the behavioral phenotype of specific developmental disabilities, including autism, fragile X syndrome, and Down syndrome, changes during adole-scence, adulthood, and old age.  In addition, she studies how the family environment affects the development of individuals with disabilities during these stages of life, and reciprocally how parents and siblings of individuals with disabilities are affected.  Her current research includes three projects: a 14-year longitudinal study of autism during adolescence and adulthood, research on a demographically representative sample of parents of individuals with develop-mental disabilities, and a study of family adaptation to fragile X syndrome (FXS). She recently completed an epide-miological study of the premutation of FXS and a 20-year follow up of a cohort of older adults with Down syndrome, examining how the family environment predicts outcomes in midlife and old age. Together, these studies offer specific insights about developmental disabilities across the life course, and the impacts on families. 

MARSHA R. MAILICK, PHD

Laura Foran Lewis, Ph.D., RN

Prior to coming to UVM in Fall 2016, Dr. Laura Lewis practiced as an inpatient hematology/oncology nurse at

the University of Connecticut Health Center and taught hematology/immunology and mental health nursing in a Licensed Practical Nursing program. Dr. Lewis is experien-ced in qualitative methodology and has used such methods as Glaserian grounded theory, meta-ethnography, pheno-menology, and qualitative content analysis. She is also interested in online applications of qualitative methods such as online interviewing and recruitment via social media. Her primary research focus is on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in adulthood. She is particularly interested in symptom variance among underrepresented populations of individuals with ASD including adults and females, improving diagnostic instruments for these populations, promoting self-advocacy among adults with ASD, and improving quality of life for couples affected by ASD. 

Dr.Ami Klin is an internationally renowned autism researcher and Director of the Marcus Autism Center at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

Ami Klin, PhD is the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Professor. He obtained his PhD from the University of London, and completed clinical and research post-doctoral fellowships at the Yale Child Study Center. He directed the Autism Program at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine until 2010, where he was the Harris Professor of Child Psychology & Psychiatry. 

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Dr. Klin’s primary research activities focus on the social mind and the social brain, and on aspects of autism from infancy through adulthood. These studies include novel techniques such as the eye-tracking laboratories co-directed with 

Warren Jones, which allow researchers to see the world through the eyes of individuals with autism

. 

Ami Klin,

Ph.D