CIRA Faculty
Dr. Lucy Barnard-Brak
Dr. Lucy Barnard-Brak is a Professor in the Department of Special Education & Multiple Abilities. She received her Ph.D. in educational psychology from Texas Tech University. Dr. Barnard-Brak’s research focuses on measurement and assessment issues for individuals with ASD and examining the educational experiences and outcomes of individuals with disabilities. She currently enjoys refining the application of item response theory models and the comparison of ROC curves to data from special populations.
Email: lucy.barnard-brak@ua.edu
Dr. Rajesh Kana
Dr. Rajesh Kana is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Director of CIRA, as well as the Cognition, Brain, and Autism Lab. He received his Ph.D. in psycholinguistics from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. As a William Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Kana learned neuroimaging from UCLA, followed by a postdoctoral training in using neuroimaging technique to study ASD at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Dr. Kana’s interests focus on basic and translational research on the neurobiology of autism. He uses a variety of brain imaging techniques, such as functional MRI, structural MRI, diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and MR Spectroscopy to understand the functional and anatomical organization of the brain in autism. Dr. Kana studies social cognition, language comprehension, executive functions, and the impact of behavioral interventions on the brain in children and adults with ASD.
Email: rkkana@ua.edu
Dr. Kana’s lab: www.cbra.ua.edu
Dr. Feiya Luo
Dr. Feiya Luo is an assistant professor in Instructional Technology in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies. Dr. Luo’s research focuses on promoting equitable computer science (CS) education through content integration at the elementary level. Her research foci include a) creating entry points for students from historically underrepresented groups, b) sustaining CS learning across grades, and c) helping teachers develop CS instructional expertise through professional development.
Email: feiya.luo@ua.edu
Dr. Evie Malaia
Dr. Evie Malaia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and the Director of the Lab for Neuroscience of Dynamic Cognition. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Purdue University, where she trained as a computational linguist and neuroscientist. Dr. Malaia’s interests focus on communication: how is information transferred from one person to another? How do babies know what parameters of their environment to pay attention to in order to communicate with others? How does communication shape brain development from infancy to adulthood? How do children with ASD process the signals surrounding them? How can the differences in neural activity in ASD be harnessed to improve quality of life for those on the spectrum, and their communities? She uses interdisciplinary approaches, encompassing cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as computational modeling of the communicative signal and its processing by brain networks.
Email: evguenia.a.malaia@ua.edu
Dr. Malaia’s lab: https://malaia.people.ua.edu
Dr. Robin McWilliam
Dr. Robin McWilliam is a Professor in the Department of Special Education & Multiple Abilities. He received his Ph.D. in early childhood special education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. McWilliam’s work is in early intervention and early childhood special education, a field that includes all disability types. He has consulted on autism services studies in health services research, developed a classroom model promoting engagement in toddlers with or at risk for ASD, presented his Routines-Based Model to numerous agencies serving children with ASD, presented at international conferences on promoting engagement, and developed a family quality of life measure for families of young children with ASD. Dr. McWilliam is also the Director of the Evidence-Based International Early Intervention Office, which promotes family-centered, functional early intervention (birth – 5 years) through the Routines-Based Model.
Email: ramcwilliam@ua.edu
Evidence-Based International Early Intervention Office: http://eieio.ua.edu
Dr. Jewoong Moon
Dr. Jewoong Moon is an assistant professor of instructional technology in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in instructional systems and learning technologies from Florida State University. His research interests broadly involve inclusive and immersive e-learning for neurodiverse students, digital game-based learning, learning analytics, and educational data mining. Specifically, Dr. Moon is investigating how immersive learning environments, such as virtual reality and digital games, support neurodiverse students’ learning engagement, problem-solving, and academic achievement in STEM education. He is currently studying the integration of multimodal learning analytics into adaptive social- and cognitive-skill training for children with ASD.
E-mail: jmoon19@ua.edu
Homepage: http://jmoon.people.ua.edu
Dr. Theodore Tomeny
Dr. Theodore Tomeny is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Research on Autism and Families Lab. He received his Ph.D. in clinical child psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi and completed a pre-doctoral internship at Indiana University School of Medicine in the autism emphasis. Dr. Tomeny’s research explores the functioning of individuals with ASD and their families. He is also interested in better understanding factors related to quality of life for those with ASD, perceptions of ASD, long-term outcomes for adults with ASD and their families, and the unique challenges faced by low resource families. Psychopathology in children and adolescents, both with and without developmental disabilities, is another area of general interest of his research lab. Dr. Tomeny and his lab also work closely with The University of Alabama ASD Clinic and the UA-ACTS program.
Email: tstomeny@ua.edu
Dr. Tomeny’s lab: http://ttomeny.people.ua.edu/raf-lab.html
Dr. Susan White
Dr. Susan White is the Doddridge Franklin Saxon Endowed Chair in Psychology and the Director of the Center for Youth Development and Intervention (CYDI). She received her Ph.D. in educational psychology and learning systems from Florida State University. Dr. White specializes in developmental psychopathology, evidence-based diagnostic assessment of psychiatric comorbidity, and development of effective prevention and intervention programs to support individuals with special needs and maximize quality of life. Her primary area of focus is co-occurrence of anxiety and other problems of emotion regulation in ASD. She conducts research on the assessment and treatment of mental health problems and establishing evidence-based transition services for people with ASD. Dr. White also maintains a broad research interest in the identification of transdiagnostic processes underlying comorbidity, or co-occurrence of symptoms of different disorders.
Email: swwhite1@ua.edu
Center for Youth Development and Intervention: cydi.ua.edu
Dr. Hyunjoo Yoo
Dr. Hyunjoo Yoo is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Communicative Disorders. She received her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Memphis. Her primary research interests include investigating infant vocal development, caregiver-infant interaction, and early affect communication, which are foundations for speech and language development. Dr. Yoo has been pursuing two lines of research in the hope of finding how infants develop infrastructure of vocal interaction and how caregivers play a role in child language development: one line seeks mechanisms of caregiver-infant interaction (e.g., vocal turn-taking) and the other line pursues acoustic correlates that account for the link between perception and production of infant and caregiver speech in vocal interaction. This understanding will not only provide deeper insight on speech and language development and early intervention but also assist in prediction of communicative disorders such as autism.
Email: hyoo3@ua.edu
Dr. Teresa Grenawalt
Dr. Teresa Grenawalt is an Assistant Professor in Rehabilitation Counseling and Counselor Education & Supervision in the Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling. She received her Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Counselor Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Grenawalt specializes in cognitive disabilities including autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and acquired brain injury. Her primary research seeks to identify effective behavioral, psychological, and vocational interventions that promote well-being, quality of life, health and functioning, and participation in employment and other life situations among people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Her secondary research interests include demand-side and evidence-based practices in vocational rehabilitation; specialized instruction in rehabilitation counselor education; and positive psychology.
Email: teresa.a.grenawalt@ua.edu
Dr. Firat Soylu
Dr. Firat Soylu is an Associate Professor of educational psychology and neuroscience at the College of Education. His research focuses on cognitive and educational neuroscience, math learning and disability, and the evolutionary and bodily origins of cognitive skills, using behavioral, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and computational modeling methods. He studies diverse populations (e.g., typical, autism, bilingual). He is eager to investigate biological mechanisms supporting cognition with interdisciplinary teams. Dr. Soylu has led the development of a PhD concentration and an undergraduate major in educational neuroscience, and is currently directing the undergraduate educational neuroscience program.
Email: fsoylu@ua.edu
Dr. Kelsey West
Dr. Kelsey West is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and the director of the Bama Baby Lab. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University. Dr. West’s research focuses on infant learning among neurotypical infants, autistic infants, and infants with language delay. How do infants master so many foundational skills (like language, motor, and social skills) simultaneously? Using laboratory experiments and natural observations of infants at home, Dr. West’s research documents how: (1) Infants actively construct their own learning environments; (2) New skills—like learning to point, walk, or say “yes” and “no”—can ripple across other areas of infant learning; (3) Delays in one domain of development can affect infants’ other emerging skills.
Email: klwest7@ua.edu
Dr. West’s lab: www.bamababylab.com
Dr. Amy Hutchison
Dr. Amy Hutchison is the Fayard Family Professor of Literacy in the College of Education. She is passionate about using digital innovations to provide equitable learning opportunities for all students and prepare them for a future that is constantly changed by digital technologies. Accordingly, she conducts scholarship that contributes to an understanding of how digital innovations can be used to provide equitable literacy learning opportunities for diverse learners, particularly students with high-incidence disabilities. Through her scholarship, she aims to prepare students for success in a world in which digital literacy is essential to well-being and to inform our understanding of how to prepare educators to teach STEM concepts through literacy in the elementary grades. Dr. Hutchison was recently awarded the Digital Literacy Game Changer Award by the International Literacy Association for her work in this area and has previously received research awards from the Literacy Research Association the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Email: ahutchison1@ua.edu
