ASF Announces 2011 Pre and Postdoctoral Trianing Award Recipients: Pre& Post Doctoral Funding Increased 22% in 2011

(March 21, 2011—New York, NY)–The Autism Science Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to funding autism research, today announced the recipients of its annual pre and post doctoral fellowships. In all, $220,000 in grants will be awarded to student/mentor teams conducting research in autism interventions, early diagnosis, biomarkers, and animal models. This funding level represents a 22% increase over last year’s training fellowship grants.

“We are thrilled to be increasing our funding in only our second year of operations, and to be supporting such high quality grants”, said Autism Science Foundation co-founder Karen London. “Outstanding research is the greatest gift we can offer our families. We are so grateful to all our donors and volunteers who have come together to support autism research.”

Grant applications were reviewed by members of the Autism Science Foundation Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) as well as by a Grant Review Panel comprised of leading autism researchers and other autism community stakeholders.

The following new projects have been selected for funding:

Post Doctoral Fellowships:

• Jill Locke/David Mandell: University of Pennsylvania
  Implementing Evidence-Based Social Skills Interventions in Public School Settings
• Portia McCoy/Ben Philpot: University of North Carolina
  Ube3a Requirements for Structural Plasticity of Synapses
• Haley Speed/Craig Powell: UT Southwestern University
  Identifying Impairments in Synaptic Connectivity in Mouse Models of ASD
• Elena Tenenbaum/Stephen Sheinkopf: Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University. Attentional Distribution and Word Learning in Children with Autism

Pre-Doctoral Fellowships:

• Jessica Bradshaw/Robert Koegel: University of California at Santa Barbara
  Prelinguistic Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infancy
• Christie Buchovecky/Monica Justice: Baylor College of Medicine
  Identifying Genetic Modifiers of Rett Syndrome in the Mouse