Katherine’s research aims to understand social and emotional difficulties experienced by individuals with genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disability and autism. She researches how differences in social cognitive development, as well as sensory processing, may underpin social and emotional functioning in these groups.

Katherine graduated in 2013 with a First Class Honours Degree in Psychology at the University of Birmingham. She completed her third year dissertation project with Prof. Chris Oliver at the Cerebra Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, investigating social anxiety and social motivation behaviours in Cornelia de Lange Syndrome. This led to a PhD also at the Cerebra Centre, investigating development in social behaviours and sociocognitive skills across rare genetic syndromes, specifically Cornelia de Lange, Fragile X syndrome and Rubenstein-Taybi syndrome.

Before joining the DDLab, Katherine’s first postdoctoral position was at the Aston Brain Centre. The aim of the project was to create a model including risk and resilience factors that can predict individual long-term neurobehavioural outcomes in children with early brain insults, by combining computational modelling, neuroimaging and clinical neuropsychology.

Alongside her research, she lectures on the MSc (Psychological Sciences) conversion course at UCL and supervises students from this and other UCL courses. If you are interested in working on a project with her, you can email her at k.ellis@ucl.ac.uk.