Elizabeth Laugeson, Psy.D.

Elizabeth Laugeson, Psy.D.

Director, Principal Investigator

Dr. Laugeson is the Director for the UCLA Tarjan Center, University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD). She is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, specializing in the development and testing of evidence-based treatments for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across the lifespan. Dr. Laugeson is the Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, which is an outpatient hospital-based program providing parent-assisted social skills training for preschoolers, adolescents, and young adults with ASD and other social impairments. 

 

Dr. Laugeson has been a principal investigator and collaborator on several studies investigating evidence-based treatments for youth with ASD and other developmental disabilities from preschool to early adulthood and is dedicated to the dissemination of these treatments across the globe. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters on social skills treatments for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities and issues related to social development for transition aged youth with ASD and has authored four published books on the topic of evidence-based social skills treatment. She has trained and supervised over 200 graduate students, pre-doctoral interns, and post-doctoral fellows over the past two decades and trained tens of thousands of mental health professionals and educators from over 125 countries on my empirically supported social skills intervention. 

 

She has a well-established track record of community engagement, outreach, and dissemination in my decade tenure as Director of The Help Group – UCLA Autism Research Alliance and through her role as Director of Outreach, Dissemination and Education for the UCLA Autism Center of Excellence. In her nearly 20 years conducting autism research at UCLA, she has cultivated strong collaborative relationships with numerous community stakeholders across the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, many of whom represent and/or serve those from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds. These relationships will undoubtedly support her role in coordinating community outreach, dissemination, education, and recruitment efforts for the current proposal. Moreover, within the UCLA PEERS Clinic, she serves over 350 youth on the autism spectrum annually, many of whom regularly participate in university-based research studies.