Author Archives: nddlab

Congratulations Dr. Katie Bangert!

Dr. Katie Bangert joined the Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) Lab and the SC Family Experiences Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020, following the completion of her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Bangert was a vital member of the NDD Lab, overseeing the management of physiological data processing and providing oversight to undergraduate students volunteering in the lab. While at the UofSC, her research focused on language development in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders and the relationship between language and physiological regulation. Following the completion of her postdoctoral fellowship in the summer of 2022, she accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls. She will be missed at the lab, but we are all excited to see what Dr. Bangert does next!

National Fragile X Day 2022

July 22 is National Fragile X Day, and this year, we were excited to celebrate the day again person! Staff and students from the NDD Lab joined researchers, families, and community advocates at the South Carolina Statehouse to hear July 22 be declared Fragile X Awareness Day in South Carolina. Thank you to everyone who came out for the proclamation and to everyone who has played a role in raising awareness, advocating for policy, and building a strong community!

To learn more about Fragile X Awareness Day in South Carolina, check out news coverage of the event and view the proclamation below.

Erin Hunt Awarded SPARC Grant

Erin Hunt, a Clinical-Community Psychology Doctoral Student in the NDD Lab, was awarded a Support to Promote Advancement of Research and Creativity (SPARC) Graduate Research Grant from the UofSC Office of the Vice President for Research. Erin’s project, “Inhibitory Control in Children with Fragile X Syndrome: Biological Underpinnings, Familial Predictors, and Functional Outcomes,” investigates the development of inhibitory control in children with fragile X syndrome and its relationship to executive functioning.

Check out the full list of 2022 SPARC awardees (including former NDD Lab research specialist Carly Moser) on the Office of the Vice President for Research’s webpage!

Conner Black Awarded SPARC Grant!

Conner Black, a doctoral student in the NDD Lab, was recently awarded a grant from the USC Office of the Vice President for Research. The Support to Promote Advancement of Research and Creativity (SPARC) Graduate Research Grant is a merit-based award designed to ignite research and creative excellence across all disciplines at the University of South Carolina. Conner’s project, “Biological Mechanisms Related to Social Anxiety in Young Children with Fragile X Syndrome,” will allow us to extend our recruitment of EEG research.

Congratulations, Conner!

Autism Research and Resource Fair

The USC Early Social Development Lab and SPARK at MUSC are hosting an autism research and resource fair on February 15 at the USC Columbia campus! This free event will include research study opportunities such as SPARK enrollments and parent workshops on Toilet Training, Teaching Requests: Strategies to Improve Communication, and Social Skills/Executive Function. Representatives from local autism organizations will be onsite hosting activities for kids and talking about their services with the community. Childcare will also be available.

We’ll have a table at this event, so we hope to see you there!

For more information and to register for workshops, click here.

Welcome Erin Hunt!

We’re excited to introduce a new graduate student in our lab, Erin Hunt! Erin joined our team back in August and is currently a first year student in the Clinical Community Psychology program at UofSC.

Erin completed a B.S. in Cognitive Neuroscience with a minor in Chemistry from Fordham University in 2017. Throughout her undergraduate career, she worked in the Fordham Memory and Aging Lab as a research assistant and completed a senior thesis examining the effects of menstrual cycle phase on cognition and autobiographical memory. After graduation, Erin completed a two-year research assistantship at the Child Mind Institute’s Healthy Brain Network, a community-based research program aiming to identify biomarkers underlying mental health and learning disorders in children and adolescents. Her current research interests include exploring developmental trajectories of neurocognitive abilities, such as inhibitory control, in relation to maladaptive outcomes in both typically developing children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

NDD Lab at the Columbia Autism Speaks Walk

We were so excited to participate in the inaugural Columbia Autism Speaks Walk on November 10! We were joined by several other labs at USC that are currently recruiting participants for autism research.

You can learn more about research opportunities related to autism here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/SCAutismResearch

New Neuroscience Club at UofSC

There’s a new club for UofSC students who are interested in neuroscience! The Neuroscience Club was founded to foster a shared passion for learning about the brain. Open to every student regardless of their major, their purpose is to increase engagement and education of neuroscience by exposing students to the neuroscience research being conducted on campus. In addition to recruiting more students to the neuroscience minor, the club is interested in creating community support to bring a neuroscience major to UofSC.

They’re hosting several events throughout the semester to showcase diverse career opportunities in the interdisciplinary field of neuroscience. They also seek to bring awareness to mental health and brain disorders and diseases through community service.

For more information, check out their profile on Garnet Gate and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

UofSC Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders Center of Excellence

Dr. Jane Roberts and Dr. Jeff Twiss were recently awarded funding to develop a center of excellence for autism and neurodevelopmental disorders research at the University of South Carolina (UofSC). This initiative aims to build a multi-disciplinary, collaborative center for basic, clinical, and intervention research and education in autism and neurodevelopmental disorders. This exciting collaborative effort has the potential to impact prevention, diagnosis, treatment and interventions for autism and related disorders.

Learn more.