Anastasia Alevriadou, Ph.D.
University of Western Macedonia, Greece
Marcia Barnes, Ph.D.
Hospital for Sick Children, Canada
Susan Ellis-Weismer, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Bryan Fantie, Ph.D.
Deborah Fein, Ph.D.
American University, USA
University of Connecticut, USA
Randi Hagerman, M.D.
University of California-Davis Medical School, USA
Michele Mazzocco, Ph.D.
Kennedy Krieger Institute, USACarolyn Mervis, Ph.D.
University of Louisville, USASarah Paterson, Ph.D.
Rutgers University, USA
Jean-Adolphe Rondal, Ph.D.
University of Liege, Belgium
Stavroula Stavrakaki, Ph.D.
University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Marina Tzakosta, Ph.D.
University of Leiden, Netherlands
ANASTASIA ALEVRIADOU, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at the University of Western Macedonia, Florina, Greece (2000- ). She obtained the M.Sc and the Ph.D degree in Cognitive Psychology (Thesis Title: The development of visuospatial abilities in mentally retarded and normally developing children) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Psychology (Supervisor Professor D. Natsopoulos). She attended a summer programme at the Cognitive Neuroscience Department, John’s Hopkins University. She worked as a psychologist at the American College of Thessaloniki. Dr. Alevriadou is a member of the Board of the Psychological Association of Northern Greece. Dr. Alevriadou’s main research interests involve cognitive abilities of mentally retarded children, especially spatial and psychomotor abilities. She has published more than 40 scientific papers. E-mail: alev@nured-fl.auth.gr
MARCIA BARNES, Ph.D., C.Psych. is Associate Professor of Psychology and University Research Chair at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and Adjunct Scientist in the Brain and Behavior Research Program at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children.
Dr. Barnes’s research combines cognitive, developmental, and neuropsychological approaches to study the development of reading and math skills in children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as spina bifida and in children with traumatic brain injury. She also conducts research on the developmental precursors and cognitive correlates of mathematical ability and disability. She is the neuropsychology leader of an international multi-site clinical trial on the effects of moderate hypothermia on neuropsychological outcomes in children with severe head injuries.
Dr. Barnes is involved in a number of training initiatives to increase research capacity in the clinical sciences. She is a member of the Highly Qualified Personnel Committee of the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network, a federally funded Network Centre of Excellence, and a member of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research taskforce to increase training opportunities, career paths, and infrastructure support for clinical scientists.
Further information can be obtained at http://www.csahs.uoguelph.ca/URC.html or http://www.psychology.uoguelph.ca/d_faculty/barnes.html
E-mail: barnesm@uoguelph.ca
SUSAN ELLIS WEISMER, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a joint faculty position in the Department of Educational Psychology and is Coordinator of the Communication and Cognitive Processes Unit at the Waisman Center, an interdisciplinary research and training center focused on developmental disabilities and mental retardation. Since joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988, Dr. Ellis Weismer has taught a variety of courses and seminars on language and cognition, language disorders, and language intervention. Her research has focused on examining the nature of language disorders in children, with emphasis on cognitive factors impacting language processing and learning. She has studied language abilities of late talkers, children with specific language impairment, adolescents with reading disabilities, and most recently, language profiles on the autism spectrum. This work has been funded by research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as by intramural support from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a Fellow of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association, former editor of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, and current member of the NIH Language and Communication Study Section grant review panel. Dr. Ellis Weismer’s website is: www.waisman.wisc.edu/lpl/home.htm. Her email address is: ellisweismer@wisc.edu.
BRYAN FANTIE, Ph.D. did his graduate work at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. There he studied LTP, kindling, and the electrophysiology of the septohippocampal system with Dr. Graham Goddard and the neuropsychopharmacology of dopamine and reward with Dr. Shinshu Nakajima.
Inspired by a prepublication draft of the first edition of The Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, Dr. Fantie went on to do postdoctoral work with Dr. Bryan Kolb at the University of Lethbridge studying the cognitive sequelae of closed head injury as well as doing basic research with neural tissue transplantation. Dr. Fantie received additional training in clinical neuropsychology at the Montreal Neurological Institute with Dr. Brenda Milner’s group.
Dr. Fantie came to the United States to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington DC and followed this with a position as a Research Neuropsychologist with Dr. Allan Mirsky in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Laboratory of Psychology and Psychopathology, which became the Section on Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.
Currently, Dr. Fantie is Associate Professor of Psychology at American University and is the Director of the Human Neuropsychology Laboratory. He was the founding Director of the Behavioral Neuroscience Doctoral Program. Dr. Fantie and his students collaborate regularly with various labs at the National Institutes of Health. These include the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute on Drug Addiction, National Insitute of Child Health and Human Development. the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. During his last sabbatical, Dr. Fantie was a Senior Neuropsychology Postdoctoral Fellow at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital in Baltimore and also spent time at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital Pediatric Neurology Clinic.
Several of Dr. Fantie’s writings are required readings in many neuropsychology programs. These include: Development of the Child's Brain and Behavior in The Handbook of Clinical Child Neuropsychology (with Bryan Kolb); Assessment of Attention Across the Lifespan in Clinical Neuropsychological Assessment: A Cognitive Approach (with A.F. Mirsky & J.E. Tatman); and The Problems of Prognosis in Neuropsychology and the Law (with Bryan Kolb).
Dr. Fantie’s research interests include the neural mechanisms and correlates of all aspects of the perception, production, and experience of emotion, as well as Theory of Mind, nonverbal memory, visual perception, and spatial cognition. E-mail: bfantie@american.edu
Web site: http://www.american.edu/academic.depts/cas/psych/bf-info.html
DEBORAH FEIN, Ph.D. is currently Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University and worked as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Boston University School of Medicine before moving full time to Connecticut. She received her training in neuropsychology at BU and the Boston VA Medical Center, under the mentorship of Drs. Edith Kaplan and Allan Mirsky. She is a Diplomate in Clinical Neuropsychology (American Board of Professional Psychology) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. She was named Outstanding Graduate Teacher for 1998-1999 by the Alumni Association of the University of Connecticut.
Dr. Fein’s main research interests have involved the neuropsychology of Autistic Spectrum Disorders, as well as issues in child and adult neuropsychological assessment. She has published over 100 articles and chapters, and is finishing a second book, mostly on autism-related topics. These have focused on language, memory, attention, social interaction, and early detection, as well as some biological studies (evoked potentials, oxytocin blood levels). She is currently investigating early detection of autism and starting an fMRI study of language in children whose autism has resolved. E-mail: deborah.fein@uconn.edu
RANDI HAGERMAN, M.D., is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician who has the Tsakopoulos-Vismara Endowed Professorship in Pediatrics at the University of California at Davis, Medical Center. She is also the Medical Director of the M.I.N.D. Institute, which stands for Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. She is an internationally recognized clinician and researcher in developmental and behavioral pediatrics and her area of expertise is behavioral phenotypes including fragile X syndrome and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She has spent over 20 years doing clinical work and research regarding neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly molecular clinical correlations and treatment endeavors. She has written several books on fragile X syndrome, including a third edition of Fragile X Syndrome: Diagnosis, Treatment and Research, which was published in 2002 by Johns Hopkins University Press. She also wrote Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Diagnosis and Treatment (1999 - Oxford University Press), which covers a broad array of disorders including fetal alcohol syndrome and sex chromosomal disorders. This volume documents multidisciplinary interventions including medical, psychopharmacological and educational treatments. Dr. Hagerman identified a new neurodegenerative disorder, FXTAS, in aging carriers of the fragile X premutation which is a model for understanding gene, brain, behavior relationships. E-mail: randi.hagerman@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
MICHELE MAZZOCCO, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA., and Associate Professor of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She obtained her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona; and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental neuropsychology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Mazzocco’s graduate training focused on typical cognitive development, whereas her postdoctoral training focused on learning disability and developmental neuropsychology. Dr. Mazzocco became involved in research on genetic phenotypes during her postdoctoral fellowship, and has been involved in fragile X research since 1990. In 1997, she established her current research program which combines her interests in typical and atypical cognitive development. That program includes studies of cognitive phenotypes of genetic disorders associated with poor math achievement, studies of mathematics and related skills in children with math learning disability, and the development of mathematical abilities in typically developing elementary school age children. Dr. Mazzocco’s web site is www.msdp.kennedykrieger.org
E-mail: mazzocco@kennedykrieger.org
CAROLYN MERVIS, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. She received her A.B. in Linguistics from Cornell University. Her graduate training in Psychology, split between Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley, was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship and focused on psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology in typically developing children and adults. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell University. She began research on individuals with developmental disabilities during her first year as an Assistant Professor, after a Ph.D. student in Special Education told her that the best way to test her models of category development and of the relations between cognition and language was to study individuals who had mental retardation. Her current developmental research is focused on language, cognitive, and personality development of children with Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, and Kabuki syndrome and children who are developing typically, using both longitudinal and cross-sectional designs. In collaboration with Colleen Morris, M.D., Holly Hobart, M.D., and Ron Gregg, Ph.D., she conducts research on genotype/phenotype relations in Williams syndrome and related disorders. In collaboration with Karen Berman, M.D. and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, M.D., Ph.D. she conducts neuroimaging studies of individuals who have Williams syndrome but normal intelligence, using MRI, fMRI, PET, DTI, and SPECT. She is particularly concerned with methodological issues in the design of research studies involving participants with mental retardation or developmental delay.
Dr. Mervis’s research on cognitive and language development of children with Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, or Kabuki syndrome and children who are developing typically is supported by a MERIT award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Her research on genotype/phenotype relations in Williams syndrome and related disorders is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Email: cbmervis@louisville.edu.
SARAH PATERSON, Ph.D., is a research associate at the Infancy Studies Laboratory, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. She earned her Doctorate in Psychology in 2000, under the supervision of Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith at the institute of Child Health, University College London, where she studied language and number understanding in infants and adults with Williams and Downs syndromes. She received the Butterworth Dissertation Award of the International Society for Infant Studies for this work.
Her research interests are in developmental cognitive neuroscience and in particular in the cognition and language of individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Thus far her work has focussed on Williams syndrome and Down syndrome, both genetic disorders, which give rise to distinct cognitive profiles in adulthood. She traces the atypical cognitive profiles present in adults with neurodevelopmental disorders to their origins in infancy using converging methododologies and is interested in the relationship between brain and cognition. She is currently working on a project with typically developing infants, which employs structural MRI, ERP and behavioural measures to chart development longitudinally from 6 – 36 months. E-mail: paterson@axon.rutgers.edu
JEAN-ADOLPHE RONDAL, Ph.D., is a Full Professor of Psychology, Psycholinguistics, and Logopedics and the Head of Psycholinguistic Laboratory, University of Liège, Belgium. Dr. Rondal has taught at the Universities of Minnesota (Minneapolis), Laval (Québec City), Hawaï (Honolulu, Manoa), Poitiers, and Strasbourg (France). Also, the Past-President of the European Down Syndrome Association (EDSA); Member of the Scientific Councils of the European Down Syndrome Association and of the International Federation (World) on Down syndrome (DSI); Scientific consultant to the Early Intervention Service of the Belgian Association for Down Syndrome (APEM), Verviers, Belgium. He is a member of the Editorial and/or Scientific Board of numerous national and international journals and reviews in psycholinguistics, patholinguistics, logopedics and speech pathology, human development and education, neuropsychology, mental retardation, and Down syndrome. Dr. Rondal is the author of approximately 300 articles and journal publications in specialized international reviews, and of approximately 40 books (a part of which has been translated in several languages) in the domains of developmental psychology, developmental psycholinguistics, and patholinguistics. E-mail: JA.Rondal@ulg.ac.be
STAVROULA STAVRAKAKI, Ph.D., is a lecturer of Psycholinguistics at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She studied Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Thessaloniki and moved to the University of Essex where she earned an MA degree in Language Acquisition; she completed her Ph.D. research at the University of Thessaloniki in 2001. Her PhD thesis is concerned with the processes of syntactic production and comprehension in Greek children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). She was a post-doctoral researcher at the University College London till September 2004. Her research has been supported by a Marie-Curie fellowship from the European Commission and a number of other grants. Her current research focuses on language abilities in SLI, Williams syndrome, and Broca’s aphasia. She has published many papers on language development and breakdown in Greek speaking children and adults in international journals.
E-mail: svoula@enl.auth.gr
MARINA TZAKOSTA, Ph.D., received her B.A and M.A. in General Linguistics at the University of Crete, Greece and her Ph.D. in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Leiden/Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on the phonological acquisition of Greek as a first (L1) and second language (L2, children and adults). Her interests are further related to bilingualism and SLI. She is currently a lecturer at the department of Philology, section of Linguistics of the University of Patras, where she offers courses on phonological language variation and change. E-mail: M.Tzakosta@let.leidenuniv.nl
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