Lab Members

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 ami 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.

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 the warren 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.

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 gordon 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.

Lindee Morgan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and codirects the Education Sciences Research Core and the Preschool Program at the Marcus Autism Center. She received her doctorate at Florida State University where she also served as the director of the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. Dr. Morgan is also a developer of the Autism Navigator, an invaluable web-based resource designed to bridge the gap between the science community and community practice. At the Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Morgan’s primary focus is on classroom-based intervention for children with ASD. Her research focuses on investigating treatments to improve classroom engagement and social communication outcomes for individuals with ASD. In addition to her roles at Marcus, Dr. Morgan serves as a cabinet member of Get Georgia Reading and on the executive board of the Atlanta Autism Consortium.

Michael Siller, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and codirects the Education Sciences Research Core and the Preschool Program at the Marcus Autism Center. He received his doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied parent-child interaction, and longitudinally evaluated the development of spoken language in individuals with ASD from preschool to early adulthood. Prior to coming to Marcus, Dr. Siller held a position as Associate Professor of Psychology at Hunter College of The City University of New York, where he studied the social, emotional, and communicative development of individuals with ASD, and completed two clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of parent coaching interventions for young children with ASD. At the Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Siller works towards developing, evaluating, and implementing community-viable educational innovations for individuals with ASD across the lifespan.

Longchuan Li, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and co-directs the Pediatric Neuroimaging Core at the Marcus Autism Center. He received his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Upon receiving his degree, he completed his postdoctoral training at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology where he focused on the methods and applications of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging. At Marcus, Dr. Li is currently working on understanding spatio-temporal patterns of early brain development using MRI, network theory, and statistical modeling. He also collaborates with Yerkes National Primate Research Center on ongoing neuroimaging studies with infant rhesus macaques.

Zeena Ammar graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering. During her time there, she took part in the Co-op program working in the Research and Development department at Bard Medical. Her undergraduate research involved building a quantitative database for a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease and extracting data on the relationship between amyloid-beta levels and cognitive task performance. During her final year at Georgia Tech she worked with the Grady Trauma Project and helped in collecting psychophysiological data to measure fear response in pregnant women across their pregnancy. Zeena is now a graduate student in the neuroscience program at Emory University working with Sarah Shultz in the Marcus Autism Center.

Aiden Ford graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2017 with a B.S. in Physiology & Neurobiology and Neurodevelopment & Health, and minors in Anthropology and Neuroscience. Her undergraduate thesis examined the behavioral and neurostructural phenotype of the TS2-neo mouse model of Timothy Syndrome mediated-autism spectrum disorder. Post-graduation, Aiden accepted the Donald J. Cohen Fellowship in Developmental Social Neuroscience and moved to Atlanta to study patterns of social visual engagement from infancy to toddlerhood with Drs. Ami Klin, Warren Jones, and Sarah Shultz. She continues this line of research now as a graduate student with Dr. Sarah Shultz in the neuroscience program at Emory University and specifically investigates the mechanisms by which dyadic social experience contributes to infant neurobehavioral development.

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.

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Jose Luis Paredes moved to Houston, Texas to attend the University of Houston where he graduated with a BS in Physics and a BS in Mathematics in 1990. He completed some graduate course work in physics (1992). He worked as a Desktop Support Specialist and Lab Supervisor at the University of Houston from 1993-2000. Jose joined Yale as a Support Specialist in 2000, then moved onto Systems Administrator for Yale University jose Calendaring System (2004-2006). He joined the Child Study Center in 2006 and moved with the Klin lab to Emory University and the Marcus Autism Center in 2011. His tasks range from client desktop support to server administration, scripting and programming in multiple languages. He is currently working on developing facial feature recognition software. Jose Luis received his MS in Computer Science from the University of New Haven in 2011.

Jennifer Gutierrez graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a B.A. in Chemistry and a minor in Anthropology. During her time at Emory, Jennifer worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Ortlund Lab investigating the glucocorticoid receptor, a transcriptional factor critical to development, metabolism, and stress. Jennifer combined structural biology and biochemical techniques to study the cortisol-mediated NF-kb inflammatory pathway that advances muscle degeneration of patients with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy. During her breaks away from school, Jennifer traveled home to Nebraska to serve her community as a nurse aide at the local extended care facility and as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking residents.

As a research assistant at Marcus, Jennifer is part of the neuroimaging team and assists in eye-tracking data collection for infants at high risk and low risk for ASD. Her current work focuses on studying transitions in cortical and subcortical visual pathways in early development. Upon graduating Emory, Jennifer joined the U.S. Army Reserves and will complete her training as a surgical specialist by summer 2020. Jennifer plans to apply to medical school and pursue a career as a physician.