Connie Kasari, Ph.D.

Dr. Connie Kasari is a distinguished professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a leading international expert in developing interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Her research focuses on targeted interventions for early social communication development in at-risk infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with autism, and peer relationships for school-aged children with autism, leading to the recognition of her therapy JASPER as an established evidence-based ASD treatment. Much of this work involves populations that have traditionally been understudied and underrepresented in research, including low-resourced children and minimally verbal children. Her work is often conducted in schools. She has published widely on topics related to social, emotional, and communication development and intervention in autism and is the author of The JASPER Model for Children with Autism: Promoting Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation. Dr. Kasari has been the primary advisor to more than 80 UCLA Ph.D. students, is on the science advisory boards of Autism Speaks and the Mount Sinai Seaver Autism Center, and regularly presents to both academic and practitioner audiences locally, nationally, and internationally.