Els for Autism - Advisory Board

Dr. Matthew Goodwin                 

Dr. Matthew S. Goodwin is an assistant professor at Northeastern University with joint appointments in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and College of Computer & Information Science. He is a visiting assistant professor and the former director of Clinical Research at the MIT Media Lab, and continues to co-direct the Media Lab Autism & Communication Technology Initiative. Goodwin serves on the Executive Board of the International Society for Autism Research, is co-chair of the Autism Speaks-Innovative Technology for Autism Initiative, and has adjunct associate research scientist appointments at Brown University. Goodwin has over 15 years of research and clinical experience working with children and adults on the autism spectrum and developing and evaluating innovative technologies for behavioral assessment and intervention, including telemetric physiological monitors, accelerometry sensors, and digital video/facial recognition systems. He received his B.A. in psychology from Wheaton College and his MA and PhD, both in experimental psychology, from the University of Rhode Island. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Affective Computing in the Media Lab in 2010.

Dr. June Groden

Dr. June Groden is considered one of the pioneers in the field of autism and developmental disabilities. Her primary areas of interest are stress and anxiety and procedures to reduce stress. She has focused on the development of relaxation and imagery based procedures for a population with autism and developmental disabilities. Dr. Groden is the Director of the Groden Center in Providence, Rhode Island.The Groden Center provides community-based evaluative, therapeutic, educational and vocational programs for children and adults who have or are at risk for moderate to severe behavioral/emotional problems, including autism. 

Dr. Martha Herbert

Dr. Martha Herbert is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a Pediatric Neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a member of the MGH Center for Morphometric Analysis, and an affiliate of the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. She is director of the TRANSCEND Research Program (Treatment Research and Neuroscience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders).Dr. Herbert earned her medical degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Prior to her medical training she obtained a doctoral degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying evolution and development of learning processes in biology and culture in the History of Consciousness program, and then did postdoctoral work in the philosophy and history of science. She trained in pediatrics at Cornell University Medical Center and in neurology and child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has remained. She recently received the first Cure Autism Now Innovator Award and directs the Cure Autism Now Foundation's Brain Development Initiative. She is the Co-Chair of the Environmental Health Advisory Board of the Autism Society of America. Her research program includes studying what makes some autistic brains unusually large, how the parts of the brain are connected and coordinated with each other, and how we can develop measure sensitive to changes in brain function that could result from treatment interventions. To this end she utilizes multimodal imaging techniques including MRI, EEG and MEG, is particularly interested in using imaging, in coordination with clinical observation, metabolic biomarkers and animal studies, in shedding light on the physiological level of changes in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and on potential domains of plasticity and targets for intervention.

 
Daniel E. Tedesco, Esq.

Dan Tedesco is General Counsel of Walker Digital, an entrepreneurial think tank. He represents the company and various start-up affiliates in a wide range of technology-related contract negotiations, including: high-value, complex patent licenses, joint ventures, third party software and firmware development agreements and nondisclosure agreements. He has managed the R&D division which developed software based innovations in electronic commerce, intelligent vending, credit card transaction procession, lottery administration, airline ticket reservation and yield management, direct marketing and event ticketing. As the parent of a 5 year old son on the autism spectrum he has focused his entrepreneurial efforts on the issue and is founder and of CEO and HandHold Adaptive, LLC, a mobile technology company to serve the growing market of developmentally disabled individuals, including those with autism. The company has raised seed capital and successfully launched iPrompts®, a visual communication program for the iPhone/iPod Touch, selling copies worldwide and enabling parents to better communicate with autistic children. The company has built a comprehensive patent portfolio in the field of "assistive technology", including mobile communication aids for the language impaired, remote caregiver assistance applications, and aids for those with sensory processing dysfunction.It is developing therapeutic video games and data tracking applications for the autism market, slated to launch in 2Q and 3Q 2010, respectively.

 
Dr. Fred Volkmar

Fred R. Volkmar, M.D., a renowned expert on autism and other childhood mental disorders, is professor of child psychiatry, pediatrics and psychology at Yale University, in New Haven, Conn., where he also directs Yale's Child Study Center. He is chief of child psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and serves as the principal investigator of three major federally supported autism studies.

Dr. Volkmar has served on national and international boards and commissions concerned with autism research and treatment, including committees of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Neurology and on the scientific advisory board of the Autism Genome Project. He also writes and lectures extensively and is editor of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities. His books include "Asperger's Syndrome," "Health Care for Children on the Autism Spectrum" and "Handbook of Autism."

 
Dr. Claes Wahlestedt

Claes Wahlestedt, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally recognized researcher of novel drug therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders and epigenetics, is the director of the Center for Therapeutic Innovation and associate dean for therapeutic innovations at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics. Wahlestedt, a founding faculty member and professor of neuroscience and molecular therapeutics at the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute, was also a founding director of the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics and a department chair at the Karolinska Institute in his native Sweden. The author of some 200 papers in major scientific journals in his field, Wahlestedt has a long-standing interest in non-protein-coding RNA (epigenetics) and pioneered various uses of antisense RNA, siRNA and small molecules that target RNA. At Scripps Florida, he co-founded CURNA, a spin-off company based on his patent for exploiting a cell’s ability to make therapeutic proteins, a discovery that holds promise for potential treatments for such diseases as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. He spent four years as assistant professor in the Division of Neurobiology, Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, at Cornell University Medical College in New York, and was subsequently adjunct professor of biochemistry, and pharmacology and therapeutics at McGill University in Montreal. He also spent more than a decade directing drug discovery or genomics efforts in the pharmaceutical industry for Astra-Zeneca, Pharmacia & Upjohn, and Pharmacia Corporation.