Center News

In 2024, three grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality supported faculty members in their research career development.

Alexandra Bey, MD, PhD; Matthew Engelhard, MD, PhD; and Danai Fannin, PhD, CCC-SLP, are leveraging the NIH-funded Duke Autism Center of Excellence grant to conduct their own related research studies.

Congratulations to Angela Claveria on receiving a NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration internship in biomechanics research! She will spend the Spring 2025 semester in Houston with NASA’s Anthropometry and Biomechanics Testing and Analytics team.

Originally trained as a physicist with a focus on quantum information theory, Dr. Sam Brandsen brings a new perspective and fresh ideas to research here at the Center for Autism. Sam completed his Ph.D. in Physics here at Duke University in 2021, but during his studies, he became increasingly interested in autism research. As an autistic individual and parent to an autistic child, Sam is especially interested in understanding quality of life in autistic individuals and learning ways to help improve the well-being of autistic individuals across the lifespan.

The Duke Center for Autism welcomes neurodivergent artists of all ages and their families to submit artwork for the 2024 Holiday Greeting Art Gallery and Contest.

Mary Berridge’s award-winning series of photographs is paired with narratives written primarily by the subjects or their parents. The exhibition, Visible Spectrum: Portraits from the World of Autism, offers an intimate view of life with autism, as told from within an autism community, which includes Berridge and her son.

Born in Bogota, Columbia, Nicolas Camacho moved to the United States at the age of 2, where he lived in Westchester, New York through high school. He completed his Bachelor’s degree at Columbia University where he studied engineering for two years before falling in love with Psychology during one of his Developmental Psychology classes and changing majors. During college, Nicolas spent time as an applied behavior analysis intern, and worked as a research assistant after graduation to gain hands on experience in the field before applying to graduate school at Duke.

The COMET study team of Dr Kim Carpenter's lab for won 2nd place in the poster competition at Duke Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences' annual research day, for their poster "Patterns of Resting State EEG in Children with Autism, ADHD, and Co-Occurring Diagnoses"

The Sensory Friendly Film Series, an initiative created through a partnership between the Carolina Theatre of Durham and the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development, provides a safe and welcoming cinema experience for autistic individuals and others in need of sensory accommodations.

Spanish is the second most common language in the United States and Durham, North Carolina, with about 13 percent of the Durham community primarily speaking Spanish at home. By law, clinics with patient services must make their services accessible when a language is strongly represented in the community. However, scientific research is not always accessible to Spanish-speaking families.

On Fridays, children coming to Duke Children’s Primary Care in North Durham for their well visit might see a clinical psychology doctoral intern from the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development on rotation with their pediatrician.