Sarah Edmunds, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Edmunds studies neurodiversity-informed interventions that address functional impairments associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), such as in social communication, flexibility, emotion regulation, and anxiety. She aims to investigate how to best implement, tailor, and increase accessibility for evidence-based interventions for ASD within early intervention, school, and mental healthcare systems.

Jessica Bradshaw, Ph.D.

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Associate Professor

Dr. Bradshaw’s research focuses on early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the first years of life, including: 1) quantifying the emergence of, and interrelations between, social behavior, visual attention, and motor skills in neonates, infants, and toddlers, 2) identifying aberrant neurodevelopmental pathways that lead to the emergence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and 3) translating these basic findings to early detection and intervention strategies for ASD.

Daniel Foster, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Foster’s research is focused on understanding how specific neuronal circuits regulate repetitive behaviors and habitual behaviors in rodents with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic strategies for treating symptoms observed in numerous disorders including autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

Norma Frizzell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

The Frizzell laboratory is interested in the neurodevelopmental manifestations of mitochondrial diseases, with a focus on the biochemical mechanisms underlying neurologic deficits. They aim to characterize metabolic changes in mitochondrial diseases that exacerbate the existing genetic defects, and they anticipate that this knowledge will inform tailored therapeutic interventions.

Jessica Green, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Dr. Green’s research uses non-invasive brain recordings to examine multisensory perception and attention, including how these processes are altered in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Neset Hikmet, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Hikmet is heavily involved in research and health sector related activities. He has led numerous distributed data collection and management projects and led and participated in grant-funded health informatics research in a wide range of contexts. His recent research project Health Services Utilization Dashboard leverages Health Sciences South Carolina’s (HSSC) 2.7 million patient based clinical data set which provides insightful information.

Kimberly Hills, Ph.D.

Clinical Professor

Dr. Hills provides clinical training in ASD assessment skills to clinicians across the state of South Carolina. Her current research interests focus on autism diagnosis, psychological assessment, prevention and intervention for at-risk youth and positive psychology.

Robert Hock, Ph.D., LMSW

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Associate Professor

Dr. Hock’s research is aimed at promoting healthy parenting and family-centered service delivery for families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and behavioral health challenges.  Dr. Hock is particularly committed to developing and testing family-system interventions to improve caregiver mental health, strengthen parent-child relationships, support co-parenting effectiveness, and increase service access. He has been an investigator on five interventions for parents, and is currently an MPI (with Dr. Mark Feinberg) of an NIH R01 Clinical trial (R01HD099295) titled, “Test of an Innovative, Scalable Support Program for Parents with a Child Recently Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

Abigail Hogan, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Hogan's research focuses on social communication in neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, fragile X syndrome), with an emphasis on factors that contribute to social communication development in young children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Hogan is especially interested in understanding the relationship between physiological regulation, anxiety symptoms, and social communication difficulties in young children. Dr. Hogan directs the Communication in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (CANDi) Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Fiona Hollis, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Fiona Hollis is a behavioral neuroscientist who studies the role of brain mitochondrial function in social behavior. Her research uses preclinical rodent models to investigate the mechanisms underlying social behaviors important to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Xianzheng Huang, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Huang’s longstanding research endeavor is studying effects of measurement error on statistical inference and developing nonparametric methods for mean regression, mode regression, and density estimation in the presence or absence of measurement error.

Caitlin Hudac, Ph.D.

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Associate Professor

Dr. Hudac's research focuses on brain development in infants, children, and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and with a genetic mutation linked to  NDDs.  She uses multiple techniques (EEG, ERP, eye tracking, fMRI) to target the underlying biology associated with social attention and cognition. 

Jessica Klusek, Ph.D.

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Associate Professor

Dr. Klusek’s research program focuses on delineating communication, social, and cognitive associated with FMR1 gene dysfunction, such as in fragile X syndrome and carriers of the FMR1 premutation. Research interests include genetic and environmental influences on phenotypic expression across the lifespan; use of cross-syndrome methods to identify areas of phenotypic overall and divergence with autism and the broad autism phenotype; identification of biological correlates of symptom expression, with a focus on autonomic dysfunction and genetic markers.

David Mott, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Dr Mott’s research focuses on circuit mechanisms in the brain that underlie social behaviors and emotional memory relevant to neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Fragile X Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Vignesh Narayanan, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Narayanan's research focuses on dynamic modeling, network science, and data science. We aim to use systems-theoretic and machine learning tools to uncover dynamic biomarkers for understanding complex neural mechanisms.

Ana Pocivavsek, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Pocivavsek's research aims to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction. Poor sleep quality is associated with impairments in cognitive function.  Her research strives to unravel common molecular mechanisms between sleep disturbances and cognitive impairments and introduce new therapeutic approaches to alleviate these outcomes.

Christian O'Reilly, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. O'Reilly's main interests are related to better understanding the brain across spatial and temporal scales in order to address complex neurodevelopmental issues such as autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The methods he uses include analytical techniques (e.g., EEG source reconstruction, functional connectivity) and modeling (e.g., point neurons, morphologically-detailed neurons, neural masses), as well as the combination of these two approaches through Bayesian model-driven analyses. He is further interested in novel ways to empower the study of neuroscience through AI and to empower AI through biologically inspired neural networks. 

Fabienne Poulain, Ph.D.

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Associate Professor

Research in the Poulain lab aims at understanding how neuronal circuits are formed, maintained and refined during development. They use a unique combination of genetic, biochemical and high resolution live imaging approaches in zebrafish to decipher the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain wiring directly in vivo. Their discoveries may give new insight on the etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders that originate from miswiring of neuronal circuits during development.

John Richards, Ph.D.

Carolina Distinguished Professor

Dr. Richards is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist interested in the relation between brain development and attention development. The lab uses structural MRI, DTI, functional MRI to evaluate brain development, and EEG/ERP during face processing to examine the role of the brain in attention to faces. They also study children and adults, and have some collaborative work on FXS and ASD.

Jane Roberts, Ph.D.

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Carolina Distinguished Professor

Dr. Roberts is a  Carolina Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology. Her work focuses on understanding the biological mechanisms that underlie cognitive and behavioral functioning in children and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, fragile X syndrome, and ADHD.

Deanna Smith, Ph.D.

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Professor

Dr. Smith studies how a microtubule motor (dynein) is regulated by the lissencephaly protein, LIS1. Her lab is particularly interested in how LIS1 controls axonal transport, a process vital to the maintenance of neural circuits and neural health. Currently, they are studying the effect of LIS1 missense mutations, including a mutation found in a child with autism. 

David Stodden, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Stodden's research agenda focuses on promoting the acquisition and development of fundamental motor skills and the association of motor skill competence with physical activity, health-related physical fitness, perceived competence, and obesity across the lifespan. His research emphasizes the need to address and understand developmental mechanisms and casual pathways related to youth physical development and trajectories of physical activity and obesity. In addition, research addressing ballistic skills allows him to further explore the behavioral and mechanical nature of multijoint ballistic motor skills and apply this knowledge to skill acquisition, youth physical development and assessment validation.

Jeff Twiss, Ph.D.

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Professor

Dr. Twiss  is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, SmartState Chair in Childhood Neurotherapeutics, and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. The Twiss lab uses molecular and cellular biology approaches to understand how neurons develop and function. They are particularly interested in how post-transcriptional regulation impacts neuron growth, focusing on subcellular mRNA translation and RNA dynamics in neurons.

Kristy Welshhans, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor

Dr. Welshhans’ research focuses on molecular mechanisms in the brain that regulate the formation of nervous system connectivity during development. Using both mouse and human cellular models, her lab aims to identify how changes in these mechanisms may contribute to Down syndrome and the intellectual disability phenotype.

Marlene Wilson, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Wilson is a stress neurobiologist and her research program investigates the neurobiological basis of sex-dependent individual differences in anxiety-like, stress and fear responses in preclinical models. She uses both conditioned and unconditioned models to investigate behavioral, endocrine, autonomic, and anatomical parameters, including rodent ultrasonic vocalizations.

Katie Wolfe, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Dr. Wolfe’s research focuses on communication interventions for individuals with autism, data-based decision making for educators and other practitioners, and the analysis of single-case research data.