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Read our most recent news highlighted below from the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci). Delve into our news archive page or stay updated by subscribing to our quarterly newsletter DevSci Developments and receive the latest updates directly in your inbox.

Our Latest Stories:

DevSci Leaders in Community Engaged Innovation

February 11th, 2026

Meg Roberts, PhD CCC-SLP (CSD)

Meg Roberts is a clinician scientist and researcher who is passionate about leveraging the developmental power and accessibility of the Early Intervention (EI) system to promote best outcomes for children with developmental disabilities and their families. Her Reduce the Wait study breaks new ground by increasing access to autism diagnostic services for children in Illinois' EI program in a manner that leverages existing resources.

 

The Problem: Currently, Illinois law only allows pediatricians and clinical psychologists to diagnose autism, leading to a dearth of qualified diagnosticians and a nearly 2-year waitlist as families in Illinois’ EI program wait to be seen for autism evaluations. This means that by the time many families qualify for specialized autism services, they will have aged out of EI! This problem was severely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and in need of a fast and effective solution. 

Meg’s Scientific Solution: As a clinician herself, Meg recognized the untapped resource found in community EI providers who work in a natural service context which reaches far more children than the specialty clinics currently responsible for early autism diagnosis. Meg used her prior work in optimizing screening and intervention with autistic toddlers to pioneer a novel diagnostic approach. She formed partnerships with EI providers, administrators, and Child and Family Connections offices to ensure the methods were feasible for clinicians and families across Illinois. Over the course of the study, dozens of EI service providers (including speech-language pathologists and developmental therapists) were trained to accurately diagnose autism via telehealth. This is groundbreaking with much promise for sustainment and scalability. Critically, EI providers’ training included information about strengths-based, family-centered evaluation and feedback methods to overcome problems in the medicalized context of traditional evaluation services. 

By widening this pool of qualified providers, the wait time for the 600 participating families from enrollment to diagnosis was reduced from over a year to just 1 month! The transformative potential of this reduced wait time means that families can gain access to needed services for their child, and importantly, gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which their child may experience the world.  

To turn this research into action, Roberts is engaging with community partners at Start Early to advocate for state policy changes that would allow EI providers to diagnose autism, thereby growing the pool of qualified diagnosticians and alleviating this bottleneck in the system. In fact, they recently filed an amendment to the Illinois Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Act to expand the scope of practice of SLPs to include diagnosing autism in children under 3 years of age. This partnership highlights the power of innovative scientific strategies to solve communities’ immediate needs, and Roberts plans to engage with additional community partners on other studies to create innovative solutions to other challenges faced by children and families in the EI program.

We asked Dr. Roberts to tell us more about her work and how DevSci has contributed! 

Tell us about your research.

"My work focuses on improving access to effective early intervention for toddlers with developmental delays (e.g. Autism, hearing loss). This clinically-based line of research examines new ways of identifying Autism and different variations of caregiver-mediated communication interventions tailored specifically for different populations of children. I want kids getting access to the best quality interventions – these are kids with developmental delays, from birth to 3, so I want their families engaged in the intervention."

What role has DevSci played in your research, sense of community and connection at Northwestern, with your students and broader engagement? 

“DevSci has offered my students a place where they can feel seen and valued. My department (CSD) is basic science heavy–including studies as basic as studying chicken embryos and functioning of the ear. So [DevSci] gives them a home where people are excited about not just what they study but how they study it. Qualitative methods, CBPR, mixed-methods – that doesn’t exist in my department. DevSci gives them a home in which their science is valued in a different way. For me, it gives me a platform where we can share ideas and make natural connections with people. After a DevSci event that linked us up, I’m working with two people in Physical Therapy. I wouldn’t have known about my collaborator, Dr. Aaron Kaat, without DevSci. He is literally the co-PI on all my students’ dissertations and we are like 1 human, we’ve worked together for the last 5 years.” 

How has affiliation with DevSci helped you individually and collectively?  

“DevSci helps me with grant applications as a resource to convince reviewers that there are resources and supports to do good developmental science at NU. It’s been fulfilling. I like mentoring, and I was just connected with a new Clinical Psych student at Lurie through DevSci…. I really connected with her and her research, and she’s going to attend our lab meetings. I like having fresh perspectives to old problems or old data sets. It creates a little hug for new people. DevSci didn’t exist when I started, [and] I would have had a better early career experience. But now, I find as senior faculty, it brings me joy to be able to support the next generation.”  

Terri Sabol, PhD (SESP)

SESP faculty Terri Sabol serves as faculty co-director of the Early Childhood Research Alliance of Chicago (EC*REACH) in the Institute for Policy Research. Housed at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR), EC*REACH partners with Chicago’s early childhood community to generate action-oriented research toward solutions for early childhood policy and practice. EC*REACH is currently the only research alliance focused on improving early childhood (prenatal-5) in Chicago. The broad goal is to accelerate the building of partnerships and knowledge to advance a more effective and comprehensive early childhood system in the city.

This collaboration is especially critical given the lack of uniform infrastructure for programs serving children and families in the years before formal public education begins. EC*REACH is an excellent example of how community collaboration leverages the resources and expertise of all partners to create meaningful change. We asked Terri to describe the collaborative nature of her work, and how DevSci has played a role in her experience at Northwestern!  

We asked Dr. Sabol to tell us more about her work and how DevSci has contributed! 

Tell us about your research.  

I am a developmental psychologist. I study early childhood education and policy, and I think about it from three levels. First, I think about how kids’ lives unfold over time. I spend a lot of time thinking about measurement. How do we assess how kids are doing over time? How do we measure that? Second, teacher quality: what makes a good classroom? I spend most of my time thinking about observational tools that will help to understand that. Third, I think about the broader context, whether that means families or broader social policies. Most of my work right now is actually in the policy realm. So, I’m thinking about these big shifts in early childhood education policy and what it means for children and families.  

What are you most excited about in your research?  

Our tagline is research-powered answers to community-driven questions. The idea is to make sure that our research is accessible and directly tied to the needs of community members. There's a big gap between what we know as researchers or what we're studying, and what's actually happening in practice and policy. So, the idea is to bridge that gap and make it easier to do research—through systems, like making data more systematic, creating opportunities for student training, having direct partnerships, and listening to our program partners about the questions that they want answered. And then the second is a shift for me, but I’m really thinking more about this: If the time between an idea to a publication is many years, how do we make that shorter so that the research actually gets in the hands of the folks who need it? So, we spent a lot of time writing rapid policy reports and memos that still lead to important work that can inform the national conversation, but focuses on more digestible, shorter pieces.  

Who are your collaborators?  

We have a lot of collaborators. Through EC*REACH, we have a really close relationship with the city of Chicago broadly, and the Mayor's office, Chicago Public Schools, and the Department of Family Support Services. We think about ways in which we can deepen those connections to ensure that our research is answering questions that are directly relevant to what the city cares about. For example, we put on a conference last year that brought together 250 researchers, programmers, and policymakers around the city of Chicago related to early childhood. It spans from working with parents to educators to individual Head Start organizations to bigger agencies. We had a meeting called the Research Alliance that brought together researchers and program folks to drum up new questions and needs within the city.

Right now, we are good with collaborating on the agency level, but want to build our collaborations at the individual and organizational level. For example, children spend a lot of time in systems outside of Chicago Public Schools so that middle space is where we're trying to think about ways to deepen.

How have your collaborations influenced the shape and directions of your work?  

Collaboration is intrinsic to what we do. It’s both in how we try to bridge researchers and decision makers together, but also how we conduct research. We truly work with our partners to answer questions that are directly relevant for them and share our findings with our partners before we write peer review articles or share with the broader public.

What role has DevSci played in your research, sense of community and connection at Northwestern, with your students and broader engagement?

My students have been really lucky to benefit from some of the DevSci graduate student funding. Those projects have been excellent and have helped them to make new connections across a broader community. My department or the whole program is very interdisciplinary, so there's a tendency for our graduate students not to look outside of our school because, in my department, you can work with an economist, a sociologist, and a psychologist. But I think what's been nice about DevSci is to help expose my students to Medical Social Sciences and see the ways in which a medical social science approach can inform their questions and give them data and opportunities to work with faculty that are outside of our world.

How has affiliation with DevSci helped you individually and collectively?

For me personally, the connections through DevSci have been really important. I was involved with DevSci from the very beginning. I worked a lot on their data repository work. I also have co-led some nice sessions that are responsive to the needs of students on navigating work, family, and work-life balance for the graduate students. I've also participated in panels around a specific topic and that's been really good to meet other scholars. I think the bridge between the Evanston campus and the Chicago campus is really important because I think without DevSci, there'd be no on-ramp to be able to do that. The ways in which DevSci can serve as the bridge across the campuses and the depth of knowledge of the folks involved in DevSci is super exciting for me personally. Because I focus on early childhood, it has been wonderful to be surrounded by a bunch of folks that focus on the earliest years. And so for me that's been the sweet spot where it's just nice to have a group of colleagues that all bring their own lens to studying the same age group.

DevSci Spotlight: Mental Health, Earlier Director, Aeysha Chaudhry

May 19th, 2025

As Executive Director of the Mental Health, Earlier center, Dr. Aeysha Chaudhry is on a mission to bring together her passions for public health and community engaged research at DevSci.

“I don’t have a developmental science background at all, but that didn’t stop me from taking any of the other roles that I did previously, because I think the methods and the way that I approach research is the same,” she said.

Mental Health, Earlier is a new initiative at DevSci focused on interdisciplinary early childhood development, including neurodevelopment, which describes how the brain matures, and psychopathology, the study of mental health illnesses. The center is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Chauhdry completed her masters in public health in London and then went on to pursue her PhD in community health sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health. Motivated by a close connection to the Chicago community and a desire to work with marginalized communities, Chaudhry’s work at Mental Health, Earlier aims to involve the community with clinical pediatric research. She said this ensures that caregivers’ voices are heard.

As part of Mental Health, Earlier’s community engagement efforts, Chaudhry says what she is most proud of in her work at DevSci so far has been developing community advisory boards, or CABs. For example, she has formed two advisory boards composed of caregivers, one English speaking and one Spanish speaking. Chaudhry has also recruited pediatric primary care clinicians from hospitals around Illinois and other states to create a clinical community advisory board.

These advisory boards are instrumental in getting feedback on Mental Health, Earlier’s research projects, Chaudhry said. She said that the clinical board includes not only clinicians from Illinois, but also from a partner hospital in Delaware.

“Our clinical partners at Nemours Children’s Hospital really were excellent partners to us and really helped us engage diverse caregivers, which is really exciting,” Chaudhry said.

Currently, Chaudhry is helping spearhead multiple projects in Mental Health, Earlier. One set of projects aims to develop different early intervention interview frameworks. For example, the DECIDE tool, which stands for “Developmental Early Childhood Instrument for Deciding Equitably for Mental Health,” is an early mental health risk calculator that pediatricians can use in early child visits, with the goal of identifying these risks by preschool age. The community advisory boards, both the caregiver and clinician ones, offer feedback and help gauge feasibility of the tools for caregivers and physicians.

Another project is creating a clinician training program for pediatricians to improve communication about early childhood mental health so that is more culturally sensitive and resonates with young children and their caregivers. The advisory boards are also involved in providing feedback to this.

Chaudhry said that DevSci’s collaborative nature has supported her work as a researcher.

“The center is the perfect example of how DevSci is involved with interdisciplinary team science,” she said. “It has taught me, personally, more about how team science can work in a clinical setting.”

Mental Health, Earlier is still in its early stages, but Chaudhry said she is excited to see how the projects develop.

“We’re able to more creatively approach the problem of early childhood mental health because we have multiple stakeholders involved,” she said. “Our intervention won't be successful unless we have all types of clinicians that I mentioned and scientists involved in it because they are able to collectively share their expertise,” she said.

DevSci Spotlight: Post-doc Fellow Blaire Pingeton

May 16th, 2025

Blaire Pingeton is a second year T32 Mental Health, Earlier Postdoctoral Fellow through the NU Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences. Read our Spring 2025 interview below with Blaire to learn more her accomplishments and the exciting work that she is doing through the fellowship.

1. Year you won the fellowship
   2023
2. Past degrees/completed programs of study
   I hold a bachelor’s degree in music, with a focus in classical voice and a minor in creative writing, from New York University. After college, I enrolled in the postbaccalaureate program in psychology at Columbia University, where I also worked full-time as a research assistant. I earned my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Emory University in 2023, just prior to starting the fellowship.
3. Your current program of study
   I’m currently a T32 postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Darius Tandon. His lab focuses on the dissemination and implementation of Mothers and Babies, an evidence-based intervention designed to prevent postpartum depression. My research builds on this work by exploring how interventions like Mothers and Babiescan be enhanced to support not only parental mental health but also child development. We’ve made significant progress in treating perinatal depression, but many existing interventions have limited impact on the child. My goal is to better understand how perinatal depression affects early development—and to develop targeted, two-generation interventions that address that risk pathway.
4. Your current research at NU
   a. Key objectives/research questions:My research aims to identify the mechanisms by which perinatal depression influences child outcomes, and to test intervention strategies that could buffer or interrupt that trajectory.
   b. What you are most excited about:I’m especially excited about adapting Mothers and Babies to better support parenting behaviors that promote early relational health—things like sensitive caregiving and responsiveness—which we know are crucial to child outcomes.
   c. Innovation/impact: This work is innovative because it moves beyond symptom reduction for parents to explicitly target parenting behaviors as a modifiable mechanism. The potential impact is large: by strengthening the parent-child relationship during a critical developmental window, we may be able to alter long-term trajectories for children exposed to perinatal depression-- the most birth complication.
5. Why/how you applied for the T32 through DevSci
   I’ve always been drawn to perinatal mental health as an early and powerful point of intervention to improve outcomes for children and families. Much of my earlier work focused on identifying mechanisms using observational data. As a postdoc, I was eager to move into applied, translational research in real-world settings. The DevSci T32 stood out to me because it offered a unique combination of training in neurodevelopmental science and community-engaged research—exactly the intersection I was hoping to deepen.
6. How the fellowship is supporting your current work
   The fellowship has been tremendously supportive. It has provided dedicated time and funding to focus on research, as well as access to a network of faculty whose expertise has helped shape my current projects. I’ve collaborated with several T32-affiliated mentors on both manuscripts and grant proposals, and I’ve been able to access key resources—such as specialized training and software—that have elevated the quality of my work.
7. Other roles DevSci has played in supporting your research
   Beyond research support, DevSci has provided an intellectual home. The seminars, peer feedback sessions, and cross-disciplinary training opportunities have helped me refine my ideas and build lasting professional relationships. I've nurtured several skillsets through DevSci initiatives, such as my interest in community-engaged interventions. 
8. Advice for future applicants to the T32
   Be clear about how your work aligns with DevSci’s mission, and how the training can help you grow in areas you haven’t yet had the opportunity to develop. I’d also encourage applicants to think broadly about the potential for collaboration—this program is rich with faculty and peers who are genuinely invested in helping each other succeed.
9. Future plans
   My long-term goal is to lead a research program focused on improving early relational health in families affected by perinatal mental health conditions. 

DevSci Community at Society for Research and Child Development

May 1 - 3, 2025

Conference Website: https://www.srcd.org/event/srcd-2025-biennial-meeting

• Session Name: Building Positive Health: Temperament, Family, and Social Context in Child Well-Being Across Developmental Stages
  • Paper Title: Unlocking Positive Health: Intra- and Interpersonal Risks and Strengths Shaping Childhood Positive Health Assets
  • Presenting Author: Courtney King Blackwell, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Session Name: The NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox: Overview of the Cognition, Motor, and Social-Emotional Domains
  • Paper Title: Development and initial validation of the NIH Baby Toolbox Social-Emotional Functioning assessments
  • Presenting Author: Courtney King Blackwell, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
  • Discussant: Richard Gershon, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Session Name: Out-of-School Time Tech: Supporting Children’s STEM Engagement through Digital Tools and Conversations
  • Paper Title: When Technology Meets Tinkering: Promoting Museum Engineering Engagement through Digital Storytelling
  • Lauren C. Pagano, Ph.D (PostDoc)
• Session: Using longform recordings to study individual differences in children’s exposure to speech
  • Paper: The challenges of using longform recordings to understand young children’s language environments in rural Malawi
  • Adriana Weisleder, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Poster: The effects of bilingual exposure on the NIH Baby Toolbox Language scores
  • Miriam A. Novack, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Session Name: Research Addressing Pandemic Challenges to Improve Developmental and Learning Outcomes for Children with Disabilities
  • Paper: Reducing the Wait: The Development and Evaluation of a New Autism Diagnostic Pathway
  • Megan Roberts, Ph. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Poster: The Role of Imagistic Gestures in Supporting Middle School Students’ Scientific Understandings about Climate Change
  • Lauren C. Pagano, Ph.D., (PostDoc)
• Session: Advancements in Quantitative Methods that Illuminate the Complex, Multi-level Role of Teacher-Student Relationships
  • Paper: Teacher-Student Relationships and Children’s Adjustment are Associated Within- and Between-Persons from Kindergarten to Grade 6
  • Sophia Magro (PostDoc)
• Session: Leveraging Community Insights to Guide Early Childhood Measurement Systems
  • Paper: Early Childhood Community Experts’ Perspectives on the Skills Children Need to Thrive in the 21st-Century
  • Terri Sabol, Ph.D. (Faculty Affiliate)
• Session: Mechanisms of Early Childhood Learning on Health and Well-Being Across Generations
  • Discussant: Norrina Bai Allen (Faculty Affiliate)
• Session: Exploring Investments in Parents to Improve Parent, Child, and Family Outcomes
  • Paper: The Longer-Term Effects of a Two-Generation Education Program on Parents and Adolescents from Low-Income Families
  • Teresa Eckrich Sommer, Ph.D., (Faculty Affiliate)

Graduate Cluster Panel Event

April 24, 2025

The DevSci Student Graduate Cluster – Career Pathways Panel for Spring 2025 focused on careers in industry . This panel was a great success, offering graduate students a wealth of practical advice and inspiration for pursuing careers beyond academia. Panel members included Bri Hightower, Ph.D., UX Research Manager at Pulse Labs; Emily Hittner, Ph.D., VP of Research at Hinge; Sheila Krogh-Jespersen, Ph.D., UX Research Scientist at Meta's Reality Lab; Silvia Lovato, Ph.D., Head of Learning and Research at PBS KIDS; and Naomi Polinsky, Ph.D., Senior Director of Research at Hillel International. Graduate students gained valuable insights into how to develop compelling resumes for non-academic positions, effectively market their research and analytical skills, and navigate the process of applying to roles in various private and non-profit sectors. Importantly, students learned how their expertise could be valuable in industries such as television, marketing, app development, and nonprofits—fields where critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication are highly sought after. The event empowered attendees to better understand and articulate their strengths to potential employers across a wide range of industries and explore career opportunities outside of academia.  

DevSci Spotlight: Post-doc fellow Brittany Manning

April 3, 2025

Like many young children, Brittany Manning was a little slower learning to talk. When Manning was in high school, she started accompanying her younger sibling, who was diagnosed as a late talker, to speech therapy visits. It was here that she discovered her fascination with speech-language pathology, the study of communication disorders. 

Now, Manning is a postdoctoral fellow at DevSci. Her current research investigates the connections between early language development and mental health challenges in children.

Manning is a member of DevSci’s “Mental Health, Earlier” training program, a National Institute of Mental Health-funded research fellowship focused on interdisciplinary childhood neurodevelopment and psychopathology. Neurodevelopment describes how the brain matures throughout childhood and beyond, and psychopathology is the study of mental health illnesses.

“Mental Health, Earlier” postdocs study mental health challenges and resilience in children and young adults. Their work aims to inspire early intervention strategies for kids with development challenges to prevent mental health issues down the line.

 “It just has been an amazing resource for me in particular because my research is so interdisciplinary,” Manning said about the program.

Before her professional research journey, Manning obtained undergraduate and masters degrees in communicative disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in Chicago, interacting with children that had challenges understanding or using language.

 She noticed that children with language difficulties also often had co-occurring mental health or neurological challenges, such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder or anxiety.

 “At the time, most of the research in my field was really focused on specific language weaknesses. We even had a word for it. It was called specific language impairment, which implied that there were a lot of kids that had isolated language weaknesses,” Manning said. “But in clinical practice, we knew that this really wasn't the case.”

Manning eventually left clinical practice to pursue a Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders and speech-language pathology at Northwestern, where she worked under Dr. Elizabeth Norton, co-director of the Neurodevelopmental Research & Assessment Core at DevSci.

Manning’s dissertation focused on a developmental skill called joint engagement and its effects on language development. Joint engagement describes how children and caregivers intentionally interact with an object or activity together, like playing with a toy.

 Manning measured brain electrical activity in children who were late talkers and those with normal language development during joint engagement sessions with their parents. She found that both groups showed similar neural activity. This meant that joint engagement could be a potential way to introduce language development exercises for late talkers.

 Combining her neuroscience work in her Ph.D. and clinical experience, Manning sought to further investigate ways to advance speech-language pathology and support kids with co-occurring challenges.

“A lot of children I worked with in clinical practice didn't just have diagnoses in the domain of language. They had associated diagnoses in the mental health domain, social challenges, behavioral challenges, and so that's something I really wanted to dig deeply into in my postdoc.” Manning said.

In her postdoc, Manning is currently working with DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag on identifying risk factors of mental health challenges in young children, like co-occurring late talking and temper tantrums, in speech-language pathology settings. Manning hopes to then teach evidence-based mental health techniques to SLPs to help improve the success of speech therapy sessions.

As a “Mental Health, Earlier” fellow and DevSci trainee, Manning said that interacting with a variety of DevSci experts, such as clinical psychology researchers, social workers and child mental health specialists, through research talks and symposiums at DevSci has supported her interdisciplinary interests.

“This has really helped me become a better researcher. I learn about new methods across these different fields,” Manning said. Alongside her postdoctoral fellowship, Manning has also applied for a career development grant to support her goals of becoming an independent researcher.

Manning said she is grateful for DevSci’s collective work.

“We each are trained in our own fields, and we have the desire to help children support their development so that they have more successful outcomes later in life,” Manning said.

Northwestern to promote toddler mental health with $11.7 million NIMH grant

October 10th, 2024

First-of-its-kind center targeting mental health prevention in early childhood in routine pediatric care. Northwestern University has launched a new Mental Health, Earlier Center at the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), thanks to an $11.7 million award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health.

Read the full article here. 

 

Dr. Laurie Wakschlag, DevSci Director, Receives Paula H. Stern Award

February 28, 2024

DevSci leaders are delighted to share that DevSci director Dr. Laurie Wakschlag has been honored with this year’s Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine.

This honor is given by the Feinberg School of Medicine Women Faculty Organization to "an FSM woman faculty member who has spent a significant portion of her career at Northwestern, has exhibited successful basic, translational, or clinical research, strong leadership at a local, national or international level in her field, and who has an exemplary track record of inspiring and mentoring trainees and/or young investigators."

In addition to serving as the Founding Director of the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), Lauren ("Laurie") S. Wakschlag, PhD is the Professor and Vice Chair for Scientific and Faculty Development in the Department of Medical Social Sciences (Division of Determinants of Health), and Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, and Human Development and Social Policy.

Read full story at Feinberg News

Propelling Equitable, Early-Life Identification and Prevention of Mental Health Risk

November 13, 2023 – from Breakthroughs