, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and a data science fellow with the eScience Institute, was nominated by the Army Research Office in the Army Research Laboratory.

Brunton is a mechanical engineer whose research focuses on data-driven modeling and control of complex systems, such as studying how turbulent fluids behave. Brunton was nominated for his work on using machine learning to develop efficient models that accurately describe the complexities of fluid mechanics. These models will then be used in part for designing better aircraft and more efficient energy systems.

, an assistant professor of physics and faculty member with the Clean Energy Institute, was nominated by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Chu was nominated for his research on high-temperature superconductivity and materials with unique properties emerging from the laws of quantum mechanics, the probability-based rules that govern the behavior of matter at the subatomic level. These materials could revolutionize telecommunications and other fields. Chu uses strain tuning, a method he developed, to deform the 3D crystalline structure of materials and probe them for exotic combinations of quantum-level properties for applications in the laboratory, industry and beyond.

, an assistant professor of epidemiology and faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, was nominated by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Lindström is a genetic epidemiologist with an interest in understanding how genetics contributes to common complex diseases, such as cancer. She was nominated for her work investigating the shared genetic origin of different types of cancer, using genetic data on more than 500,000 individuals. Her research will inform future study designs and help identify global biological mechanisms that underlie cancer development and progression.

, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and faculty member with the Center on Human Development & Disability and the Molecular & Engineering Sciences Institute, was nominated by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Nance’s research focuses on developing nanotechnology-based therapeutics to treat diseases and injuries to the brain. Using a combination of tissue imaging techniques, nanotechnology approaches and data science tools, she models the conditions present in different brain microenvironments — information needed to streamline the development of more effective and more precise nanoscale therapeutics to repair and protect the core of our central nervous system.

, an associate professor of environmental and forest sciences, was nominated by the National Science Foundation.

Prugh is a wildlife ecologist whose research explores interactions among species and the response of wildlife communities to global change. Prugh was nominated for her work that looks at the effects large carnivores have on smaller carnivores, particularly as animal distributions change rapidly worldwide. As part of this project, Prugh is the impacts gray wolves have on coyotes and bobcats as wolves naturally recolonize Washington state.

, currently an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, also received a PECASE. Cheung, who was nominated by the U.S. Department of Energy, will join the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley later this summer.

In addition, , a chief engineer at the , received a PECASE. Schneider, who is also a 91̽»¨affiliate associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, was nominated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The PECASE was established in 1996 to recognize the contributions that scientists and engineers have made to STEM fields, as well as education, leadership and public outreach. Participating federal departments and agencies nominate scientists for consideration. Final awards are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President.

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To new parents, a baby’s every gurgle and glance are fascinating, from a smile at mom or dad to a reach for a colorful toy.

But when a baby doesn’t look at parents and caregivers, imitate gestures and sounds, or engage in play, parents have questions. And a growing number are bringing their babies to the for answers.

As autism diagnoses have increased over the years — an estimated has autism spectrum disorder — parents have looked for signs earlier in their children’s lives, especially if they have an older child with autism. While the in the United States is around 4 years, a growing body of and practice suggests accurate assessment of children as young as 12 months old, though rare, is not only possible, but also useful.

“Many people have an unfounded belief that you have to wait until 36 months of age to diagnose autism. That is not the case,” said , who directs the 91̽»¨Autism Center and is a research affiliate at the . “There is a great deal of value in diagnosing as soon as symptoms emerge — it gives parents a great deal of relief and allows appropriate intervention to begin.”

With only a few infant autism clinics scattered around the country, families have brought their  infants to the 91̽»¨Autism Center from elsewhere in the United States, and in a few cases, the world, Estes said. The natural next step was to dedicate services to them.

The center’s , officially established this spring, provides four clinical psychologists to evaluate infants and toddlers up to 24 months of age, along with teams of behavior analysts to create a treatment plan with clinic- and home-based activities — just as would happen with older children. The difference, Estes explained, is the specific expertise with the infant population.

The Autism Center, part of the , has conducted a number of studies into the signs of autism and the effectiveness of intervention strategies. Earlier this year, Nature published from the center’s involvement in a North American effort that examined brain biomarkers in infants, including those with at least one autistic sibling. The study showed that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) helped correctly identify 80 percent of babies who would go on to be diagnosed with autism at 2 years of age Researchers are wrapping up another study, focused on toddlers 12 to 24 months old, that looks at structured intervention activities versus a more play-based approach.

That work bolsters the center’s diagnostic and treatment capacity with infants, Estes explained.

For older infants and toddlers, psychologists focus on social and communication deficits, said , a research scientist and clinical psychologist at the center. Typically-developing infants and toddlers spend time engaging and interacting with their caregivers, which helps them learn language and fosters their social development.

“Children showing the early signs of autism don’t do those things as much as expected, or they don’t do them at all,” St. John said. “We look at a repertoire of other behaviors as well: Do they do the same thing over and over? Do they pick up a toy and inspect it closely? Do they have a hard time when you change activities?”

It is less common to diagnose a very young child, St. John said, but when that happens, it’s typically because the symptoms are clear.

“Most people are hesitant to give a diagnosis to a child who isn’t showing clear signs of ASD. We tend to give early diagnoses to children who meet all of the criteria for a diagnosis, and if they’re not, we take an assessment-and-monitoring approach, where we give parents specific recommendations based on the child’s current challenges, and then see the child back 3 to 6 months later,” she explained.

Treatment would follow the same general trajectory, depending on the infant’s symptoms and development, as toddlers and older children. Specialists might work on communication, for instance, through strategies to encourage eye contact. As children age, they work with specialists on cognitive, social and motor skills, both individually and in peer groups. Much of the Autism Center’s approach is designed to give parents tools that they can use at home, Estes said.

Spotting the signs of autism early is critical, she added, so that a family can connect with the right services, whether in the clinic or out in the community.

A little over three years ago, the Autism Center accurately diagnosed its youngest client: a 10-month-old boy. Thanks to subsequent intervention activities, Estes said, he has developed communication skills, engages socially and is thriving in preschool.

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For more information, contact Annette Estes, estesa@uw.edu; 206-543-1051.

Researchers from the 91̽»¨ were part of led by the University of North Carolina to use MRI to measure the brains of “low-risk” infants, with no family history of autism, and “high-risk” infants who had at least one autistic older sibling. A computer algorithm was then used to predict autism before clinically diagnosable behaviors set in. was published Feb. 15 in the journal .

This is the first study to show that it is possible to use brain biomarkers to identify which infants in a high-risk pool — that is, those having an older sibling with autism — will be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, at 24 months of age.

“Typically, the earliest we can reliably diagnose autism in a child is age 2, when there are consistent behavioral symptoms, and due to health access disparities the average age of diagnosis in the U.S. is actually age 4,” said co-author and 91̽»¨professor of speech and hearing sciences , who is also director of the and a research affiliate at the 91̽»¨, or CHDD. “But in our study, brain imaging biomarkers at 6 and 12 months were able to identify babies who would be later diagnosed with ASD.”

The predictive power of the team’s findings may inform the development of a diagnostic tool for ASD that could be used in the first year of life, before behavioral symptoms have emerged.

“We don’t have such a tool yet,” said Estes. “But if we did, parents of high-risk infants wouldn’t need to wait for a diagnosis of ASD at 2, 3 or even 4 years and researchers could start developing interventions to prevent these children from falling behind in social and communication skills.”

People with ASD — which includes 3 million people in the United States — have characteristic social communication deficits and demonstrate a range of ritualistic, repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. In the United States, it is estimated that up to one out of 68 babies develops autism. But for infants with an autistic older sibling, the risk may be as high as one out of every five births.

This research project included hundreds of children from across the country and was led by researchers at four clinical sites across the United States: the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, UW, Washington University in St. Louis and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Other key collaborators are at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the University of Alberta and New York University.

“We have wonderful, dedicated families involved in this study,” said , a 91̽»¨professor of radiology and associate director of the CHDD, who led the study at the UW. “They have been willing to travel long distances to our research site and then stay up until late at night so we can collect brain imaging data on their sleeping children. The families also return for follow-up visits so we can measure how their child’s brain grows over time. We could not have made these discoveries without their wholehearted participation.”

Researchers obtained MRI scans of children while they were sleeping at 6, 12 and 24 months of age. The study also assessed behavior and intellectual ability at each visit, using criteria developed by Estes and her team. They found that the babies who developed autism experienced a hyper-expansion of brain surface area from 6 to 12 months, as compared to babies who had an older sibling with autism but did not themselves show evidence of autism at 24 months of age. Increased surface area growth rate in the first year of life was linked to increased growth rate of brain volume in the second year of life. Brain overgrowth was tied to the emergence of autistic social deficits in the second year.

The researchers input these data — MRI calculations of brain volume, surface area, and cortical thickness at 6 and 12 months of age, as well as sex of the infants — into a computer program, asking it to classify babies most likely to meet ASD criteria at 24 months of age. The program developed the best algorithm to accomplish this, and the researchers applied the algorithm to a separate set of study participants.

Researchers found that, among infants with an older ASD sibling, the brain differences at 6 and 12 months of age successfully identified 80 percent of those infants who would be clinically diagnosed with autism at 24 months of age.

If these findings could form the basis for a “pre-symptomatic” diagnosis of ASD, health care professionals could intervene even earlier.

“By the time ASD is diagnosed at 2 to 4 years, often children have already fallen behind their peers in terms of social skills, communication and language,” said Estes, who directs behavioral evaluations for the network. “Once you’ve missed those developmental milestones, catching up is a struggle for many and nearly impossible for some.”

Research could then begin to examine interventions on children during a period before the syndrome is present and when the brain is most malleable.  Such interventions may have a greater chance of improving outcomes than treatments started after diagnosis.

“Our hope is that early intervention — before age 2 — can change the clinical course of those children whose brain development has gone awry and help them acquire skills that they would otherwise struggle to achieve,” said Dager.

The research team has gathered additional behavioral and brain imaging data on these infants and children — such as changes in blood flow in the brain and the movement of water along networks — to understand how brain connectivity and neural activity may differ between high-risk children who do and don’t develop autism. In a published Jan. 6 in , the researchers identified specific brain regions that may be important for acquiring an early social behavior called joint attention, which is orienting attention toward an object after another person points to it.

“These longitudinal imaging studies, which follow the same infants  as they grow older, are really starting to hone in on critical brain developmental processes that can distinguish children who go on to develop ASD and those who do not,” said Dager. “We hope these ongoing efforts will lead to additional biomarkers, which could provide the basis for early, pre-symptomatic diagnosis and serve also to guide individualized interventions to help these kids from falling behind their peers.”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the .

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For more information, contact Estes at 206-543-1051 or estesa@uw.edu and Dager at 206-616-1558 or srd@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: HD055741, HD003110, R01 MH093510, 6020, 140209.

Adapted from by the UNC news office.

The device and research using it to study the brain patterns of children will be presented June 18 at the meeting in Seattle. A , developed by the UW’s , was , an online open-access journal.

“Scientists needed a tool that allows them to see in real time what a person is writing while the scanning is going on in the brain,” said , director of the center’s Instrument Development Laboratory. “We knew that fiber optics were an appropriate tool. The question was, how can you use a fiber-optic device to track handwriting?”

To create the system, Lewis and fellow engineers Frederick Reitz and Kelvin Wu hollowed out a ballpoint pen and inserted two optical fibers that connect to a light-tight box in an adjacent control room where the pen’s movement is recorded. They also created a simple wooden square pad to hold a piece of paper printed with continuously varying color gradients. The custom pen and pad allow researchers to record handwriting during functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to assess behavior and brain function at the same time.

Other researchers have developed fMRI-compatible writing devices, but “I think it does something similar for a tenth of the cost,” Reitz said of the 91̽»¨system. By using supplies already found in most labs (such as a computer), the rest of the supplies – pen, fiber optics, wooden pad and printed paper – cost less than $100.The device connects to a computer with software that records every aspect of the handwriting, from stroke order to speed, hesitations and liftoffs. Understanding how these physical patterns correlate with a child’s brain patterns can help scientists understand the neural connections involved.

Researchers studied 11- and 14-year-olds with either dyslexia or dysgraphia, a handwriting and letter-processing disorder, as well as children without learning disabilities. Subjects looked at printed directions on a screen while their heads were inside the fMRI scanner. The pen and pad were on a foam pad on their laps.

Subjects were given four-minute blocks of reading and writing tasks. Then they were asked to simply think about writing an essay (they later wrote the essay when not using the fMRI). Just thinking about writing caused many of the same brain responses as actual writing would.

“If you picture yourself writing a letter, there’s a part of the brain that lights up as if you’re writing the letter,” said , professor of radiology and principal investigator of the 91̽»¨. “When you imagine yourself writing, it’s almost as if you’re actually writing, minus the motion problems.”

Richards and his staff are just starting to analyze the data they’ve collected from about three dozen subjects, but they have already found some surprising results.

“There are certain centers and neural pathways that we didn’t necessarily expect” to be activated, Richards said. “There are language pathways that are very well known. Then there are other motor pathways that allow you to move your hands. But how it all connects to the hand and motion is still being understood.”

Besides learning disorders, the inexpensive pen and pad also could help researchers study diseases in adults, especially conditions that cause motor control problems, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

“There are several diseases where you cannot move your hand in a smooth way or you’re completely paralyzed,” Richards said. “The beauty is it’s all getting recorded with every stroke, and this device would help us to study these neurological diseases.”

The work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Other 91̽»¨collaborators on the project are Peter Boord, Mary Askren and Virginia Berninger.

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For more information, contact Reitz at freitz@uw.edu, or 206-543-9023.