Emma McQueen graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2020 with a B.S. in Psychology and minors in Chemistry and Neuroscience. As a recipient of the Autism Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Grant and David Bray Peele Award, she completed her senior thesis assessing executive functioning profiles in 7-12-year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder using electroencephalography, the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery and parent report. She also worked as a research assistant in the Early Development in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Lab evaluating restricted and repetitive behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As a volunteer at the UNC TEACCH for Toddlers Early Intervention Program, Emma worked to incorporate naturalistic, structured, and behavioral intervention strategies with parent coaching.
As a Clinical Research Fellow, Emma was involved in projects linking social-visual engagement measures to interdisciplinary clinical assessment and evaluation. She was interested in investigating the predictive power of eye-tracking data compared to diagnostic measures of ASD across vulnerable populations. Emma is currently pursuing an MD/MPH at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.
Mackenzie Hines-Wilson was a joint Clinical Research Fellow and Cohen Fellow in Developmental Social Neuroscience from 2021-2023. She graduated with college honors from Washington University in St. Louis in 2021 with a B.A. in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuroscience and a minor in Anthropology. As a joint Clinical Research Fellow and Cohen Fellow, Mackenzie was interested in projects that are targeted at using eye-tracking measures of social visual engagement and clinical evaluations to increase early-detection of ASD in marginalized populations. She investigated the relationship between co-occurring psychiatric disorders and ASD by using diagnostic tools and eye-tracking technology. Mackenzie is now a Clinical Research Coordinator at Marcus.