Lab Members | Emory School of Medicine

Principal Investigators

Ami Klin, Ph.D. is the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Professor and Chief of the Division of Autism and Developmental Disabilities at Emory University School of Medicine, and Director of the Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He obtained his Ph.D. 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. 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. Dr. Klin is the author of over 180 publications in the field of autism and related conditions. He is also the co-editor of a textbook on Asperger Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infants and Toddlers published by Guilford Press, the third edition of the Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders published by Wiley, and several special issues of professional journals focused on autism spectrum disorders.

Laura A. Edwards, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Marcus Autism Center. Her research aims to leverage social neuroscience methods and insights to improve the educational outcomes of children with autism and related communication disorders. Her current projects focus on identifying optimal timing and targets for early intervention, the development of community-viable biomarkers for predicting and monitoring risk of school difficulties, language/communication and literacy development, optimizing inclusive classrooms, and the role of arts education in social development. She received her doctorate in Human Development and Education from Harvard University.

Aiden Ford, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor within the Pediatric Neuroimaging Core at the Marcus Autism Center. She received her doctorate in Neuroscience from Emory University. As a developmental social neuroscientist, Dr. Ford is interested in the mechanisms by which modifiable factors enmeshed within early social experiences contribute to individual variability in neurobehavioral development, with a particular emphasis on infant-caregiver interaction. Her research integrates computational approaches and longitudinal modeling to investigate how infants learn within social interaction across multiple timescales and how their learning shapes and is shaped by structural and functional brain development. She also collaborates with researchers at the Emory National Biomedical Research Center to study how social learning processes are conserved between humans and non-human primates.

Jocelyn Kuhn, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Autism and Developmental Disabilities at Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Kuhn’s research aims to promote equitable access to evidence-based, culturally responsive mental and behavioral health care for children and adolescents on the autism spectrum. Her work targets critical junctures across the lifespan, from the diagnostic odyssey to the transition to adulthood. Her research agenda is applied and change-oriented, informed by real-world problems that arise for families from communities that have historically been underserved by the service system and under-represented in research. She works together with partners in clinics, schools, and community settings that are well-positioned to adopt and implement practices that can better support all children and their families.

Cheryl Klaiman, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and Director for the Assessment and Diagnosis Program at Marcus Autism Center, leading a team of 15 clinicians to conduct diagnostic evaluations for clinical and research patients. She is also clinical director of a multisite, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-regulated clinical trial working to translate research endeavors at Marcus into a tool for diagnosing autism. Dr. Klaiman is also Assessment Core Director for the center’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center of Excellence grants. At the Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Klaiman investigates techniques to aid in the differential diagnosis of individuals with autism, such as eye-tracking, ERP and functional MRI, early diagnosis and treatment strategies, and genetic comorbidities, such as fragile X syndrome and Williams syndrome. She earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from McGill University in 2003 and then completed her pre- and post-doctoral internship at the Yale Child Study Center.

Warren Jones, Ph.D. is the Director of Research at the Marcus Autism Center and is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University. His research is focused on the use of eye-tracking technologies to characterize and quantify the social phenotype in autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and related conditions. The aim of Dr. Jones’s research is to better understand the perspectives and struggles of individuals with social disabilities, to quantify phenotypic variation in the manifestation of such disabilities, to improve efforts at early diagnosis, and to develop future strategies for intervention.

Katherine Pickard, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Michigan State University and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at JFK Partners at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her primary research interest is in the translation of evidence-based practices into community systems that are naturally positioned to serve children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental delays. This interest is rooted in a longstanding commitment to better understanding and addressing treatment disparities. Dr. Pickard’s research is grounded in community-engaged research models and guided by dissemination and implementation science. At Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Pickard leads and collaborates on research examining mechanisms that foster the adoption, implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices within a variety of community systems, including early intervention and public school systems. She is particularly interested in the role of families and community stakeholders in shaping interventions as they are implemented within the community, and in other factors that impact the reach and sustainability of translation efforts.

Gordon Ramsay, Ph.D. is the Director of the Spoken Communication Laboratory at the Marcus Autism Center and is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine. Gordon graduated from Cambridge University in England with a B.A./M.A. in Electrical and Information Sciences and an M.Phil. in Computer Speech and Language Processing, and went on to complete a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Southampton. He has also studied and worked at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris, France, the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, the Institut de la Communication Parlée in Grenoble, France, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium, and has ongoing collaborations with the Department of Linguistics at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and MARCS Auditory Laboratories at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. Trained as a speech scientist and electronic engineer, his research has centered on understanding the biological foundations of spoken language by building computationally-explicit models of speech production and speech perception, and applying these to speech synthesis and recognition. In collaboration with Ami Klin, Warren Jones, and David Lin, he has recently begun developing new statistical tools and novel experimental paradigms for investigating the development of audiovisual perception in infants with autism. In his spare time, he is writing a prehistory of mechanical speaking machines.

Sarah Shultz, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine. She received her doctorate in Cognitive Psychology from Yale University, where she used both behavioral (eye-tracking) and neuroimaging methods and analysis techniques (fMRI, EEG, dynamic causal modeling) to investigate social cognition and perception gordon from infancy to adulthood in both typically-developing populations and populations with ASD. At the Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Shultz investigates the causes and biological mechanisms of ASD. Using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, she studies the interaction between developmental changes in the brain and the developmental unfolding of social behavior in infants with and without ASD. She also uses simultaneous eye-tracking and fMRI to study how the brain functions when children actively explore dynamic, naturalistic social scenes.

Current Fellows

Past Lab Members

Staff

Sydney Messer Olson LMSW is a Research Project Coordinator at Marcus Autism Center. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Appalachian State University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Georgia. At Marcus, she manages research activities for the Pediatric Neuroimaging Core, leads the development of a study website for public dissemination, and supports a Community Advisory Board that informs research direction and priorities.Sydney is particularly focused on advancing community-engaged and participatory research in autism. She is committed to ensuring that research is shaped by the voices of autistic individuals and their families, and that findings are shared in ways that are accessible, meaningful, and actionable for the communities they aim to serve.

Jose Luis Paredes is an Applications Developer and Analyst. He received his Masters in Computer Science specializing in Network Systems at the University of New Haven. He graduated from the University of Houston with a Physics and a Mathematics Bachelor of Science degrees. He is currently developing an automatic signal preprocessing (artifact detection and removal or correction) python pipeline using MNE for single and dual high-density EEG recordings for reproducible analyses. He develop a stimuli presentation application in XOJO that works in conjunction with an IScan eye tracking collection system, synchronizing eye tracking data collection with video presentation. This application in addition synchronizes video presentation and eye tracking data collection with an EEG data collection system. He developed and continues support an automated region of interest detection and tracking application written in MATLAB based on the KLT algorithm. Jose also works in the development and implementation of other miscellaneous in-house software and hardware solutions . He provides configuration, deployment and technical support of macOS and windows desktop and laptop computers. He also provides training and support with computer programming fundamentals.

Graduate Students

Originally from Panama City, Panama, Adriana Mendez graduated from Emory University in 2018 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Economics. While at Emory, she completed a senior thesis assessing the implications of bilingualism on learning in adults. She also worked as a research assistant at the Bauer Memory Lab where she studied memory development in school-aged children. Additionally, as a research assistant at the Atlanta VA Medical Center she worked with adults with chronic pain who had served in the United States armed forces. Adriana began as a Donald J. Cohen Fellow at Emory in 2018. As a fellow, she studied the impacts of bilingual early-life language exposure on measures of sociovisual engagement through eye-tracking. Adriana continues this and other lines of research focused on ameliorating health disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of ASD now as a graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Emory under the mentorship of Dr. Ami Klin

Elizabeth (Elly) Kushner graduated in 2019 from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.Phil in Developmental Psychology where she conducted research on the development of communication within the context of parent-child interaction among children with ASD. She then completed a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Marcus Autism Center working in the Education Sciences Research Core and the Social Neuroscience core, primarily studying the interplay between social visual engagement and language development in children with ASD. She continues to work at the Marcus Autism Center while completing a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Emory University studying parent-mediated early interventions for ASD with a particular interest in social-communicative and emotional development and intervention.

Kareem Chambers graduated in 2019 from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience, where he conducted research characterizing disruptive behavior problems and comorbidities in preschoolers with ASD. Additionally, he worked at the Cannabis Lab of the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Bayview Medical Center, helping elucidate the effects of THC, nicotine, and alcohol on the brain and body. After graduating, he was an NIH PREP scholar at the University of South Carolina, studying protein expression underlying cellular adhesion and wound healing in Down's syndrome. Currently, he is completing a doctorate in Neuroscience at Emory University with a particular interest in social development in infants with ASD.

Abigail Driggers graduated from the University of Kansas in 2022 with a B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience. While at KU, Abigail conducted research examining lifestyle treatments for depression and completed an honors project on listening comprehension in ASD. From 2022 to 2024, Abigail worked as the primary research coordinator for the Biobehavioral Research on Autism, Intellectual and Neurodevelopmental disabilities (BRAIN) laboratory coordinating and administering standardized cognitive and psychological assessments, task-based EEG, eye movement and gross motor tracking, and structural and functional MRI for studies of motor development and degeneration in ASD and Fragile-X related disorders. Abigail began as a graduate student of the Emory Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - Neuroscience in 2024, with research interests in developmental variations in communication and social function and how social, motor, and cognitive development in infancy interacts to shape the early learning environment and future outcomes.

Caius Gibeily graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2022 with a BSc in Cell Biology and then completed an MSc Neuroscience at the University of Oxford in 2023. His previous research projects have explored questions in neurodevelopment and degenerative disease, including understanding the role of VIP+ inhibitory interneuron maturation in sensory processing in barrel cortex and developing a microfluidic platform for interrogating the neuromodulatory landscape in models of Parkinson’s Disease. Caius is now a PhD student working in the Shultz Lab where his research focuses on understanding the intersection of brain development, behavior, and autism using functional neuroimaging and computational methods. As a member of Emory’s Center for Mind, Brain and Culture program, he also has a passion for interdisciplinary study.

Clinical Research Coordinators

Carmen Baden graduated from Emory University in 2021 with an honors degree in American Studies and a concentration in Disability Studies. During her time at Emory, Carmen completed an undergraduate honors thesis examining the effects of ableism in preschool settings under the guidance of Dr. Catherine Rice. Following graduation, she began her time at Marcus as an Assistant Preschool Teacher in the Brett and Louise Samsky Preschool. She then took on the role of Research Coordinator of a new multi-site study led by Dr. Lindee Morgan examining the effects of the peer-mediated intervention, Stay-Play-Talk, in local metro Atlanta inclusive preschools. Led by her love of working with families, Carmen is now the Research Coordinator for the Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) research study under the guidance of Dr. Sarah Schultz and Dr. Warren Jones. In the future, Carmen hopes to pursue a graduate degree in Speech Language Pathology or Public Policy.

Tyla Keys, B.S., is a Clinical Research Coordinator at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee in May 2024. During her undergraduate studies, Tyla served as a Medical Education Intern in 2022 through the Patient Experience Internship at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, where she conducted independent inpatient surveys to enhance patient communication, safety, and overall care quality. She also supported the Director of Graduate Medical Education in initiatives that provided valuable insight into the operations of academic medical centers. In 2023, Tyla was selected for the Le Bonheur-Rhodes Neuroscience Institute Summer Plus Fellowship, where she contributed to research on the reliability of TMS-elicited hand motor responses in pediatric patients with epilepsy. As part of the fellowship, she examined retrospective MRI data using MANGO software to identify regions of interest and centers of gravity and performed statistical calculations to support neuroimaging analysis. She continued her involvement in a volunteer capacity after the summer, contributing to a joint first-authored manuscript and helping prepare a poster presentation for the hospital’s Pediatric Research Day.

In her previous role, Tyla worked as a Registered Behavior Technician at the Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she implemented behavior intervention protocols to support functional communication, daily living skills, and school readiness in children with autism spectrum disorder. In her current position as a Clinical Research Coordinator, she supports MRI-based research under Dr. Sarah Shultz and Dr. Benjamin Risk, focusing on structural and functional brain studies in autism. Her work includes data collection for projects involving infants aged 0–6 months with an elevated likelihood of an autism diagnosis, as well as children aged 8–13 years with confirmed autism diagnoses. In the future, Tyla plans to pursue both an MN and PhD, combining clinical nursing practice with research to directly impact patient care and scientific discovery in pediatric neurodevelopment and neurodiversity.

Hamza Syed graduated with honors from the University of Georgia (UGA) in 2022 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in General Business. During his time at UGA, Hamza studied the dyadic relationship between parent and child self- regulation in Dr. Drew Abney’s Developmental Dynamics Lab. Throughout his time in Athens, Hamza volunteered for Shifa Clinic Athens, a clinic providing free healthcare for underserved communities in the area, and Hillandale Primary Care, a private primary care clinic. After graduating, Hamza became a Registered Behavioral Technician at Applied Behavioral Consulting to provide behavioral therapy for children on the spectrum ages 4-12. He also volunteers for the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America where he participates in the administration of annual Free Annual Health Fair events and other fundraising and community events with the organization.

With the desire to work with families, further understand Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and participate in the research process, Hamza now works as a Clinical Research Coordinator at the Pediatric Neuroimaging Core at Marcus. As a member of the lab under Dr. Sarah Shultz, Hamza collects MRI data from infants with an elevated likelihood of Autism to examine brain development within the first 6 months of life. Under Dr. Benjamin Risk, he collects data for a study that examines school-age children with the goal of expanding the representation of children with ASD in MRI research. In the future, Hamza hopes to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, bridging together scientific research and clinical practice to improve our understanding of human psychology.