Research Team

Katherine Meltzoff, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Special Education in the Graduate School of Education at UC Riverside. She completed her Postdoctoral work at the Yale Child Study Center, received her PhD in Experimental Psychology from University of California, San Diego. Dr. Meltzoff (formerly Stavropoulos) conducts translational studies to explore the reward system in ASD, as well as how anxiety contributes to social deficits in ASD. She plans to investigate school-based interventions for children with ASD, and how those interventions affect neural activity, behavior, and school performance. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and is the assistant director of the the UCR SEARCH Center.

Elizabeth Baker, M.Ed., is a doctoral student in the School Psychology program at UCR. She earned her B.A. in sociology and psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include measuring adaptive behaviors in individuals with ASD, identifying anxiety in children with ASD, and quantifying neural correlates of social communication & social reward. She is also interested in developing ways to integrate qualitative research, such as stakeholder perspectives, to further inform her work.

Tricia Choy, M.Ed., is a doctoral student in the School Psychology program at UCR. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interest focuses on underlying neural correlates related to social skills, emotion regulation, and empathy development and how the family unit impacts socialization in youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Cameron Alexander, B.S., is a doctoral student in the School Psychology program at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a B.S. in Human Development, with minors in Education and Psychology, from the University of California, Davis. Prior to joining UCR, Cameron served as a research coordinator and lab manager for an Institute of Education Sciences grant at the UC Davis School of Education and MIND Institute Collaborative Autism Research in Education (CARE) Lab. His research interests include utilizing biomarkers and neurological activity as tools for the early detection of autism in young children. He is also interested in the use of biomarkers to better understand and measure emotion regulation in children with varying neurodevelopmental disabilities. 

Sarah Touati is a doctoral student in the School Psychology program at the University of California, Riverside. She holds a B.S. in Psychology  and a minor in education. Sarah is currently working as a Behavior Interventionist and practicing Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy and was a teacher assistant for a kindergarten Special Education class when she was a senior in high school. Her research interests are in the development of anxiety in children with and without ASD which led her to join the SCDN lab as a research assistant in her third year. Sarah is passionate about educating herself and others about the importance of diversity and awareness of different mental disabilities and disorders. 

Mallory Scott (she/her) is a graduate student in the Special Education and Autism program at University of California, Riverside. She is currently working as an Education Research Assistant in the Center for Learning and Development at SRI Education. Her research interests include early intervention for autistic children, transitionary periods for autistic adults, data equity in autism research, educational media, and student mental health and well-being. She holds a B.S. in Elementary Education from Utah Valley University.