Overview

Dr. Jennifer Stapel-Wax is a Professor in the Division of Autism and Related Disorders in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine. Her clinical and administrative role is as the Director of the Infant Toddler Community Outreach Research Core at the Marcus Autism Center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Dr. Stapel-Wax has worked clinically with children and families for over 35 years with a 25-year career in doctoral level research, clinical practice, and graduate level teaching. She completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at the Georgia School of Professional Psychology and her internship in pediatric behavioral medicine and neurodevelopmental disabilities at Miami Childrens Hospital. Dr. Stapel-Wax completed her postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology and neurodevelopmental disabilities at the Marcus Center/Emory University postdoctoral fellowship program. Dr. Stapel-Waxs specialties include assessment of young children, neurodevelopmental disorders, teaching, training, supervision, and consultation/liaison in multiple systems of care. Dr. Stapel-Waxs clinical and research interests are in the areas of early brain development, early screening and detection and pre-emptive intervention/prevention. She maintains a research portfolio of federally funded and foundation grants. She has held roles of principal investigator or co-investigator on 12 federally funded grants and 28 foundation or public health funded grants over the last decade. Dr. Stapel-Wax is a primary author/creator of Talk With Me Baby (TWMB), a language nutrition approach broadly applied in the public health setting. TWMB is implementing capacity building strategies early in the developmental period to collectively address the early language development with implications on education and health outcomes over the lifetime. This approach is expanded to a 2GEN approach-TWMB CONNECTS- to address the parent/child system in areas of health and wellbeing and to a sister program -Hablame Bebe- to address the needs of Spanish speaking families.

Based at the Marcus Autism Center, Dr Stapel-Waxs current focus is to provide leadership for community-based research for infants and toddlers and those infants at risk for autism spectrum disorders. Professionally, she is an expert at building collaborative and consultative relationships among professional colleagues in the community and other institutions. She is passionate about advancing the careers of young faculty, especially those underrepresented in the sciences. Dr Stapel-Wax serves her community through committees devoted to faculty development, diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI), mentorship, grant and manuscript review as well as serving on regional and national professional, manuscript and grant review committees. Dr Stapel-Wax is also a member of several national and international collaboratives focused on early brain development as well as early screening, identification, and intervention for children at risk for developmental disorders.

Academic Appointment

• Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Emory University

Education

Research