Dr. Dennis Wall has been named in the top 10 of the 30 Most Innovative People in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Research by the Master’s in Special Education Degree Program Guide, a leading, comprehensive resource guide for the field of Special Education. Coming in at #9, Dr. Wall shares his nomination with other leaders in the field across universities and foundations. Nomination comprised judging criteria in innovation, applicability, awards and recognition, and accomplishments. Criteria factored in uniqueness in approach and significance of the insights offered to the field of ASD research.

At TEDMed 2014, Prof. Wall, Catalin Voss, and Nick Haber gave a demonstration of their work on creating a Google Glass tool to help those with Autism Spectrum Disorder interact with others. Pictured below is Nick sporting the fashionable glasses.

Dr. Wall and Dr. Saxe, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Child Studies Center at the NYU Langone Medical Center, have collaborated on an opinion piece sharing the importance of the development of data-driven tools to shorten the path to diagnosis in clinical assessments for autism in order to maximize treatment efficiency towards the trending rise of autism prevelance in the United States.

A snippet and a link to the full are both provided below.

In the past two decades, autism’s prevalence has increased by more than 600 percent. Although autism manifests early in development, the average age of diagnosis in the U.S. continues to hover stubbornly above 4 years. Unless families can pay out of pocket for specialty programs, they must wait for a diagnosis before launching into therapy.

By the time they get there, their child has lost opportunities for intervention that might have had huge long-term benefits. With the rate of autism now at 1 in 68 people and climbing — the result of changes in diagnosis, greater awareness, increasing parental age and, really, anyone’s guess — the need for solutions that reach the risk population more quickly and effectively has never been more real.

For most families, the diagnostic odyssey of autism has more stops and starts than the 16 Odysseus endured, with two main stops: the initial detection of risk and its clinical confirmation.

The path to each is long. The first path is not standardized and often rests on the family’s shoulders. The second has more structure, but the process is long and cumbersome, making it difficult to scale it to address the global need. Worse, these two steps are generally decoupled in today’s healthcare system.

Read the full article

Leticia has traveled back to Spain to get married. She will continue her work remotely on Route 66, and will still be at lab meetings. She will be back at the end of September for another year of research at the Wall Lab.

We are currently looking for two bioinformaticians and a data specialist:

• Big Data Specialist
• Junior Bioinformatician
• Senior Bioinformatician

Learn more about the jobs here.