Connie Kasari, Ph.D.

Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

SFARI Investigator Website

Connie Kasari received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Since 1990, she has been on the faculty at UCLA, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses and has been the primary advisor to more than 60 Ph.D. students. She is a founding member of the Center for Autism Research and Treatment at UCLA.

Kasari’s research aims to develop novel, evidence-tested interventions for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that can be implemented in community settings. Recent projects include targeted treatments for early social communication development in infants at high risk for ASD, toddlers and preschoolers with ASD, and peer relationships for school-aged children with ASD. She leads several large multisite studies, including a network on interventions for minimally verbal school-aged children with ASD and a network that aims to decrease disparities in interventions for children with ASD who are underrepresented in research trials. She regularly presents to both academic and practitioner audiences locally, nationally and internationally.

Funded Projects

Evaluating two newly developed treatment outcome measures (BOSCC and ELSA) in the context of an ASD behavioral intervention trial

Awarded: 2019
Award Type: Targeted: Novel Outcome Measures for ASD Clinical Trials

SFARI Funded Publications

Parenting stress in caregiver-mediated interventions for toddlers with autism: An application of quantile regression mixed models. Schlink A., Williams J., Pizzano M., Gulsrud A., Kasari C.

Using the Clinical Global Impression Scale to assess social communication change in minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder. Toolan C., Holbrook A., Schlink A., Shire S., Brady N., Kasari C.