John Vijay Sagar, M.D.
Dr. K.John Vijay Sagar completed his MBBS from S.V.Medical College,Tirupati,India and subsequently pursued MD (Psychiatry) from NIMHANS (1998-2001). He completed his senior residency from Christian Medical College, Vellore and JIPMER, Pondicherry and has been working as a Faculty in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NIMHANS over the past 10 years. He currently holds the designation of Professor and Head of the department.
Dr.John has been involved as a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in several research projects in the area of Neurodevelopmental Disorders especially Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) funded by ICMR, DST, DBT, ICSSR,NIH (USA), Aziraeli Foundation (Canada) etc. He is also the current Chairperson of the Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) Child Psychiatry Section. Dr. John serves as Dr. Meera's primary fellowship supervisor for her early career fellowship.
Sundarnag Ganjekar, M.D.
Dr. Sundarnag is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry, NIMHANS, who specializes in perinatal maternal mental health. He is also currently serving on Dr. Meera's project as a consultant for parent mental health.
Satish Girimaji, M.D.
Dr. Satish C Girimaji completed his MBBS from Bangalore Medical College and MD (Psychiatry) from Post-graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India.
He has been a faculty in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NIMHANS, Bangalore for over 30 years. Dr. Girimaji is currently Senior Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Dean (Behavioural Sciences) at NIMHANS.
Dr. Girimaji was a member of the WHO Working Group on Classification of Intellectual Disabilities (revision of ICD-10). His major areas of interest are clinical, genetic, family and community aspects of neurodevelopmental disorders, and child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. He has around 110 publications.
Pratibha Karanth, Ph.D.
Dr. Prathibha Karanth, Ph.D. (Speech & Hearing) is the Founder Director & Managing Trustee of The Com DEALL Trust, Bangalore.
She has over 40 years of work experience at several national institutions in India and has published and presented about 50 books and manuals, (available in English, Hindi and Kannada). She has worked extensively in the areas of adult aphasias, acquired dyslexias, learning disability, specific language impairment and communication in autism/pervasive developmental disorders.
Dr. Karanth has conducted several research projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Fullbright, UNICEF, CommonWealth, ICMR, DST, etc. She has been awarded Lifetime Contribution Award from from IRC, Bangalore; Reeta Peshawaria Oration” by NIMH Hyderabad and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, GOI; MahilaThilakam Award’ by the Dept. of Social Welfare, Govt of Kerala, Prof R.K.Oza Oration, Indian Speech and Hearing Association; Vimla Virmani award by the National Academy of Medical Sciences, New Delhi;
Dr. Karanth has held two tenures as president of the Indian Speech and Hearing association and is currently on the advisory board of CADREE, ICCONS and Sri Chitra Thirunal Institute of Neurological Sciences.
Steven F. Warren, Ph.D.
Steven F. Warren, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor of Speech-Language- Hearing: Sciences and Disorders and an Investigator with the Institute of Life Span Studies at the University of Kansas.
Dr. Warren’s research has focused throughout his career on communication and language development in children with developmental delays and disabilities. Much of this work has focused on the effects of different types of communication and language interventions as well as the way that children with specific neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. Down syndrome) respond to different interventions.
In 2004, he began working with an interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers on the development of LENA, a breakthrough technology that automatically captures and analyzes huge amounts of child language interaction data in any language.
Dr. Warren serves as Principal Investigator in collaboration with Dr. Nancy Brady on an ongoing longitudinal study on the impact of parenting on the development of children with fragile X syndrome (the most known genetic cause of autism) since 2003. His work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health throughout his career.
His research has been recognized by career research awards from the National Down Syndrome Congress (1999), the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (2008), and the American Psychological Association (2013).
Linda R. Watson, Ed.D.
Dr. Watson is a Professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, with training in Special Education, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Speech-Language Pathology.
Her research focuses on young children who are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), or are at-risk for a later diagnosis of ASD.
Collaborative projects include the development of the First Years Inventory (FYI), a screener to identify 8-16 month old infants at-risk for ASD; efficacy studies of interventions for infants/toddlers at-risk for ASD and preschoolers with ASD; research on the implications of different sensory processing patterns among these populations; and a study of predictors of language outcomes in children with ASD.
Joseph Piven, M.D.
Joseph Piven, received his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland in 1981 and completed training in general and child and adolescent psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He continued in research training in the genetics of neurobehavioral disorders, during a postdoctoral John Merck Fellowship at Johns Hopkins.
He was on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa from 1990 through 1999. Dr. Piven is currently Thomas E. Castelloe Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, a comprehensive institute for services, research and training in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Dr. Piven is an active clinician. He is director of one of 14 NICHD-funded Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers. He directs an NIH-funded postdoctoral research training program in neurodevelopmental disorders at UNC, has been the Principal Investigator of for 12 years of an NIH-funded Autism Center of Excellence Network study of brain development in infants at risk for autism.
He directs the North Carolina University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Community Living. He is founding Editor of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. His research is focused on the pathogenesis of autism related neurodevelopmental disorders.
Associated Institutions
