Sandra Edwards Colloquium

Associate Dean, Chair, and the Mrs. T.H. Chan Professor of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California. Dr. Baranek is a prolific scholar and expert on sensory features of children with autism and their longitudinal impacts on child and family outcomes. She is the author of the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), widely used by researchers to characterize sensory features for children ages 2-12 years. She is also the lead author on the First Years Inventory (FYI), a screening tool for infants 6-16 months of age with elevated likelihood of autism in the community. As director of the USC Chan insp!re lab, she leads an interdisciplinary research team focused on the early identification of social-communication and sensory-regulatory risk markers of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions, and on the development of parent-infant interventions. Dr. Baranek has been PI or Co-PI on many grants funded by agencies such as the NIH, DoD, AOTA, Autism Speaks, and IES. She is also an Executive Director for the Sensory Processing and Autism Network (SPAN), a clinical-research partnership to grow evidence-based occupational therapy practices, and was named as a Fellow of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) in recognition of her significant international impact on the scientific understanding of autism.

Associate Professor at the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Clearwater Department of Occupational Therapy. He has been a clinician for over 25 years assessing and treating children and youth with disabilities in a variety of government health agencies, private practices, schools, universities, and community settings. He has authored and co-authored several publications and regularly presents his work internationally. Dr. Reinoso is an expert in sensory processing and integration and delivers education and services to clinicians and families in Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Gustavo is co-author of two standardized assessments of sensory integration, the Structured Observations of Sensory Integration (Motor) (SOSI-M) and the Comprehensive Observations of Proprioception-Revised (COP-R). His research interests include sensory integration and processing, autism, children and youth, handwriting, measurement and statistics, disability studies, and the development of assessment tools.

Assistant Professor, in the Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Public Health and Health Professions, at the University of Florida. Dr. Bodison is an internationally renowned expert in sensory integration theory, assessment, and intervention. Her research program uses multimodal neuroimaging methods to investigate the neural correlates of sensory processing as a foundation for the development of sensorimotor and social-emotional skills in neurotypically developing children and those with neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Bodison has received research grants from the Department of Defense, the NIH National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Southern California Clinical Translational Science Institute to study developing sensorimotor networks in children with autism, prenatal alcohol exposure, and sensorineural hearing loss. Her research program strives to elucidate sensory brain-behavior relationships to inform the development and refinement of rehabilitation interventions for children and adolescents. Dr. Bodison has (co)authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters; is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Occupational Therapy; and has presented over 100 scientific papers and clinical trainings across the globe. She also has clinical expertise in the development of feeding and eating skills in very young children.

Associate Professor in the Western Michigan University Occupational Therapy Department and a Co-Director of the Resiliency Center for Families and Children. She has focused her career on service provision, research and teaching related to improving the lives of the pediatric population through participation in meaningful occupation. In addition, she is an author of Hand Grasps and Manipulation Skills: Clinical Perspectives of Development and Function, Second Edition.