Micah Mazurek, PhD
Micah Mazurek, PhD, is the Novartis U.S. Foundation Professor of Education in the Department of Human Services, Director of
UVA’s Supporting Transformative Autism Research (STAR) initiative, and Director of the Blue Ridge Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (Blue Ridge LEND) program. Dr. Mazurek received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Yale University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She completed her pre-doctoral clinical internship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Missouri.
Dr. Mazurek’s research focuses on understanding and improving outcomes for individuals with autism and their families, and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, Autism Speaks, the Simons Foundation, and other agencies. Her current research focuses on developing new tools, techniques, and technologies for improving diagnosis, treatment, and access to care for individuals with autism and their families.
Several of Dr. Mazurek’s current projects focus on testing and validating diagnostic and treatment-outcome tools, including parent- and teacher-report measures and observational tools. Additional active projects focus on identifying factors and practices that promote early identification and diagnosis of autism, including a current multi-site study validating a gaze-based measure of autism risk in toddlers and young children. Dr. Mazurek’s research also focuses on improving quality of life, mental health, and sleep problems among individuals with autism across the lifespan (ranging from longitudinal studies to clinical trials). This work includes identifying predictors, mechanisms, and outcomes of co-occurring symptoms in order to guide development and testing of more targeted and effective interventions. Other active projects are focused on developing and testing strategies for improving access to evidence-based care for underserved children and adults with autism, including adaptation and testing of the Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) framework for training and mentoring community-based providers.