On the 15th and 16th of March, Sarah White and Ceci Qing Cai attended the 2024 Frontiers in Neuroscience Forum held at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. The Forum’s theme was “cutting-edge issues in brain science: from basic research to clinical applications” and brought together experts from UCL, MIT, and the local neuroscience community in Zhejiang. Both Sarah and Ceci presented their latest insights to the over 300 participants who attended the forum. The Forum also served as a celebration for the 5th anniversary of the establishment of the School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine at Zhejiang University.
Congratulations to Ceci who was awarded her PhD in 2023! Ceci originally joined the lab in 2017 and during her PhD, supervised by Prof Sophie Scott and Dr Sarah White, she investigated the socio-emotional essence of vocal communication in autistic and non-autistic adults. Her work incorporated self-report questionnaires, behavioural experiments, and neuroimaging (fMRI). Ceci continues her research at the ICN as a postdoctoral research fellow – in 2023, she received a UCL Fellowship Incubation Award, enabling her to further study face-to-face social interaction from a neurodiversity perspective.
Congratulations to Ishita for passing her PhD viva in 2023! Ishita originally joined the Developmental Diversity Lab as a research assistant in 2017. During her time as a PhD student, supervised by Dr Sarah White, she studied how deception detection abilities change throughout development and if this might be an area of difficulty for autistic individuals. She also explored how these abilities might be related to mentalizing, bullying, and mental health. Ishita is now a Lecturer at University of Surrey, but she continues to collaborate with the DevDivLab at UCL.
Between September 27 and 29, 2023, David Ruttenberg took on the roles of chair, panel participant, and presenter at the Multimodality and Future Landscapes event at ICOM-11, delving into topics like Meaning Making, AI, Education, Assessment, and Ethics. The presentation focused on data extracted from his thesis, which outlines improved approaches to alleviate sensory sensitivity experiences, attentional challenges, and mental well-being disturbances in autistic adults. This information was shared with an academic audience, emphasizing an ethical perspective geared towards protecting at-risk autistic individuals from security and harm issues when gathering their personal data through environmental and psychophysiological sensors.
PhD student Nevin Ozden presented her poster on delay discounting at the 3rd edition of the social cognition workshop “From self-knowledge to knowing others”, held in Brussels. This workshop brings together researchers to share their experience in measuring the processes underpinning others’ and self-understanding in general and clinical populations. Nevin shared results from her study on how mentalizing and executive function abilities affect delay discounting performance in autistic and non-autistic children.
After completing a 3-year term as Chairperson for the Florida Atlantic University’s Centre for Autism and Related Disabilities (FAU-CARD), David Ruttenberg was re-elected to the Executive Board for an extended 5-year term. FAUCARD, a community-based program, provides direct assistance to 7,500+ individuals with autism spectrum disorder and related disabilities, offering support to families, schools, and community agencies. Services include training for family members, professional development for educators, support groups, community education, information dissemination, referrals, newsletters, and email updates. The center also supports businesses working with individuals with autism, among other initiatives.
Katherine Ellis presented at the National Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS) conference in April 2023, hosted by the CdLS Foundation UK and Ireland. CdLS UK and Ireland host these conferences twice a year as a way for families to meet each other and talk to one another about the condition. These conferences also serve as an opportunity for professionals to give presentations that focus on specific elements of CdLS – at the April 2023 conference, Katherine presented on sensory processing differences in CdLS.
Several DevDivLab members and alumni presented at the ITAKOM Conference from Monday 13 – Tuesday 14 March 2023 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and online. These included posters from:
Ruihan Wu who presented on "Are the social abilities of neurodivergent individuals measured accurately? An intergroup bias in smile discrimination in autism."
David Ruttenberg who presented on "Sensory, Attention And Mental Health Interventions For Autism: A Technological Patient And Public Involvement Study."
To mark World Autism Awareness Day, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society (formerly the Institute of Education) rounded up a selection of the many ways our researchers, lecturers, and students are working to transform the narrative around autism in a recent twitter post. The DevDivLab was featured also featured in a Q&A Article featuring David Ruttenberg’s research.
Dr Katherine Ellis, in collaboration with Prof Raja Mukherjee (Clinical lead of the National FASD clinic) and Dr Jo Moss (Co-lead of the Cerebra Network for Neurodevelopmental Disorders), organised the fetal alcohol syndrome research meeting and workshop. Hosted at University of Surrey in January 2023, this research meeting served as a networking event to establish collaboration between clinicians, practitioners, and researchers.
