News

In January, we welcomed Yesenia Dela Sancha to the lab as our spring HDFS Intern. Yesenia will work on both SAGA and EAT, as well as our virtual projects (Connections+ and AMP). Welcome Yesenia!  

In November, Maia, a first-year graduate student in the Harrop Lab, attended the 2025 International Summit on Suicide Research, where she presented her work – Characterizing Profiles of Autistic and Non-Autistic Children (Ages 6-8 Years) with Parent-Reported Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors: A Small Cohort Case Study. She hared this research as...

Orla became Dr. Putnam this fall! Orla successfully defended her dissertation, “Naturalistic Social Communication in Autistic Females: Identification of Speech Prosody Markers” in November and graduated in December. Orla is the first official Harrop Lab PhD! She begins her postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University in 2026.

This fall we welcomed Dr. Kathryn McNaughton as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. McNaughton received her PhD in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Maryland under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Redcay. Her research investigates neural and cognitive factors involved in peer interactions between autistic and non-autistic youth. As...

This fall we welcomed Anne and Cecilia as HDFS Interns. Cecilia may be a familiar face to some of you, working in the lab since 2024. Both Anne and Cecilia will work on SAGA and EAT.

A familiar face in the lab transitioned from lab coordinator to grad student this summer! Maia Karpinsky, who many folks know through their role in SAGA, was accepted into the Developmental Psychology program at UNC and will continue to work with Dr. Harrop and the lab.

Dr. Morton (UNC TEACCH) and Dr. Harrop were recently awarded a 2-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to examine historic trends in the co-occurrence of Autism and ADHD with a specific focus on sex differences. The study will draw from the National Survey of Child Health and...

Dr. Harrop was appointed as one of six new editors for the journal Autism this summer.

Graduate student, Orla Putnam, led a study, published in Neurodiversity, examining how self-reported camouflaging behaviors associated with the interests held by autistic adults. The study focused on how these relationships vary by gender in autism.

Postdoc, Dr. Tyler McFayden, left the lab full-time this summer. Dr. Tyler worked with many of our SAGA families and she will be sorely missed! Lucky for us she is staying on a day a week to help with SAGA visits!