Foss-Feig Laboratory
2023

JANUARY 2023 

Michael Peruggia presented his poster at the KTGF Child Psychiatry Conference in Providence, RI. 

 

 

2022

JULY 2022 

Jennifer Foss-Feig was promoted to Associate Professor. Huge congratulations to Jen!

In other news, coordinators Sarah Barkley and Bonnie Lerman are off to graduate school. Sarah will be pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology at Stony Brook University, and Bonnie will be starting medical school at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. We wish them good luck – Sarah and Bonnie, you will be missed! 

JUNE 2022 

We are pleased to announce that Arabella Peters, Kirsten Long and Alissa Chen have joined the lab as clinical research coordinators. Welcome, Arabella, Kirsten, and Alissa!

MAY 2022 

The Foss-Feig lab goes to INSAR! The International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) held its annual conference from May 11 – May 14 in Austin, TX. This 4-day conference aimed to exchange and disseminate new scientific progress among ASD scientists and trainees from around the world. Maria Nava Palma was selected to give a talk on her work with Centro Ann Sullivan del Perú (CASP). Sarah Banker, Jadyn Trayvick, Sarah Barkley, Bonnie Lerman, and Monica Schreiber presented posters.

2021

OCTOBER 2021 

We are proud to announce that Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig has received a Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) 2021 Human Cognitive and Behavioral Science Award! The project, titled “A neuroscience-inspired digital platform for measuring social functions to parse heterogeneity and predict outcome in autism,” will investigate social functioning in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Congrats Jen!

SEPTEMBER 2021 

Congratulations to PhD student Sarah Banker for publishing a review paper in Trends in Neurosciences! The review, titled “Hippocampal contributions to social and cognitive deficits in autism spectrum disorder,” outlines a role for the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory, navigation, and social behavior, in the pathophysiology of autism spectrum disorder.

JULY 2021 

We are so proud of our research coordinator Kate Keller, who is heading to the psychology PhD program at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in the fall. Good luck Kate, we will miss you! We can’t wait to hear about all of your success in graduate school. 

JUNE 2021 

We are excited to welcome Jadyn Trayvick and Monica Schreiber to the Foss-Feig research team! Jadyn graduated from Yale University in 2021 with a B.S. in Psychology, and Monica graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 2019 with a B.A. in Public Health. They join our team as clinical research coordinators. 

MAY 2021 

Congratulations to lab alumna Chris McLaughlin on publishing his first first-author paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33966481/). Way to go Chris!

In other news, lab members Sarah Barkley and Bonnie Lerman  presented virtual posters at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) 2021 annual meeting; lab members Sarah Barkley, Bonnie Lerman, Sarah Banker, and Jacqueline Beltrán presented virtual posters at the first annual Innovators in Neuroscience: From Molecules to Mind Symposium. 

APRIL 2021 

Congratulations to Sarah Banker for receiving the BRAIN award (Best Record of Achievement in Neuroscience), which recognizes outstanding academic and research performance in the first years of graduate school! Sarah received this award at Mount Sinai’s 13th Annual Neuroscience Retreat. 

Lab members Sarah Banker, Sarah Barkley, Bonnie Lerman, and Jacqueline Beltrán presented virtual posters at the retreat, which used Gather Town to facilitate the hybrid conference format. Shown on the right: virtual party at Bonnie’s poster! 

 

MARCH 2021 

Congratulations to PREP scholar Jacqueline Beltrán for her acceptance to the neuroscience PhD program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai! We are thrilled that she will be staying in the Sinai community and can’t wait to see what she will accomplish. 

2020

DECEMBER 2020 

Click here to watch our musically talented clinical research coordinators (Bonnie Lerman, Kate Keller, Sarah Barkley, and others) explain some of the steps they’re taking at the office to stop the spread of COVID-19!

OCTOBER 2020

We are pleased to announce that Jacqueline Beltrán has joined the Foss-Feig research team. Jacqueline Beltrán graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) where she earned a B.S. in Biopsychology. Jacqueline joins the Foss-Feig lab through Mount Sinai’s Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program. Welcome, Jacqueline!

Postdoc Sylvia Guillory is starting a new position as a research scientist at Leidos. Congratulations Sylvia! We will miss you!

SEPTEMBER 2020

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig, along with co-investigators Dr. Daniela Schiller and Dr. Xiaosi Gu, was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The study will  investigate the neurocomputational mechanisms of proactive social behavior deficits in autism spectrum disorder. Read about the grant here. Additionally, Sarah Banker was awarded a Seaver Fellowship. Her project will similarly focus on using computational modeling and 7T neuroimaging to study social decision-making in autism. Congratulations to Jen and Sarah! 

AUGUST 2020

We are pleased to announce that Bonnie Lerman and Sarah Barkley have joined the Foss-Feig research team. Sarah graduated from Cornell University in 2020 with a B.S. in Human Development, and Bonnie graduated from Duke University in 2019 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. They join our team as clinical research coordinators. We are excited to have them working with us! 

JUNE 2020

Two of our clinical research coordinators are heading to graduate school! Christopher McLaughlin will be attending the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in the fall of 2020 as a part of the highly competitive Columbia-Basset Program to pursue his MD. Hannah Grosman will be attending Drexel University to pursue her PhD in Clinical Psychology. Congrats, Chris and Hannah!

MAY 2020

We are pleased to announce that Sarah Banker has joined the Foss-Feig research team. She joins our team as a Neuroscience PhD student and will be co-mentored by Dr. Daniela Schiller and Dr. Xiaosi Gu. We are excited to have this new addition to the lab. Welcome, Sarah!

MARCH 2020

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig was awarded The Advanced Neuroimaging Research Program (ANRP) grant for research at the BioMedical Engineering & Imagining Institute. Her 3T imaging study will examine dynamic social behavior to understand the brain basis of social difficulties in autism & identify novel targets for behavioral interventions.

2019

DECEMBER 2019

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig attended the 58th Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Orlando, Fl. Dr. Foss-Feig participated in a panel on Biomarkers in autism spectrum disorder: promise for differentiation, subtyping, and treatment discussing the EEG response to simple sensory stimuli as a potential biomarker for predicting outcomes and differentiating syndrome-specify profiles in Autism.

OCTOBER 2019

We are pleased to announce that Kate Keller has joined the Foss-Feig research team. Kate Keller recently completed her BA at SUNY Geneseo. She joins our team in the capacity of a clinical research coordinator. We are excited to have this new addition to the lab. Welcome, Kate!

AUGUST 2019

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to develop and validate a dimensional observer-report measure of positive and negative features of ASD. This grant is in collaboration with Drs. Carla Mazefsky, Paul Pilkonis, and Lan Yu at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Learn more about the research award here.

JUNE 2019

Lab alumna Emily Isenstein received a scholarship to support her summer research investigating the differentiation and integration of visual and proprioceptive information in children with autism spectrum disorder. Learn more about her research here.

MAY 2019

Dr. Foss-Feig was featured in Spectrum News regarding her clinical work and perspective on research related to ties between psychosis and autism. Read the article here: Spectrum.

MAY 2019

Marta Migo attended the Association for Psychological Science’s annual conference. Held in Washington, D.C. this year, Marta presented a poster on the electrophysiological markers of motor preparation in ASD and their association with ADHD symptoms.

MAY 2019

The Friedman Brain Institute’s 11th Annual Neuroscience Retreat occurred on May 10th and brought together scientist and physicians that contribute to the neurosciences at Mount Sinai. Research coordinators, Christopher McLaughlin and Hannah Grossman, and undergraduate research assistant Sue Kim presented their research on probing social engagement, sensory functioning, and temporal processing in ASD, respectively.

MAY 2019

Research Assistant, Yian Zhang participated in the Undergraduate Research conference presenting her work using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the influence of prior experience, or lack thereof, in perceptual judgements. Yian received recognition for her work and won an award for best presentation within her presentation session. Congratulations, Yian!

MAY 2019

The International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) held it’s annual meeting in Montreal, Canada. INSAR is one of the largest meetings of its kind, bringing together researchers from around the world to discuss and share the latest findings in autism research for four days. Many of the members of the Foss-Feig lab participated in the conference disseminating research results that investigated different aspects of sensory and perceptual processing.

APRIL 2019

Research Assistant, Sue Kim was a recipient of the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund (DURF) grant. The DURF grant is awarded to students at NYU’s College of Arts and Science to help fund their research. Sue’s DURF grant will help to fund her project that aims to investigate the sensory consequences of action in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its relation to core ASD symptoms.

APRIL 2019

Research Assistants, Yian Zhang and Marta Migo participated in Child Health Research Day at the Icahn School of Medicine. Yian presented a poster on perceptual processing and prediction error bias in autism spectrum disorder and Marta presented a poster on ASD and symptoms of ADHD predict abnormal neuronal preparation for motor activity.

FEBRUARY 2019

Research Coordinators, Hannah Grosman and Christopher McLaughlin, along with research assistant Victoria Baskett presented at this year’s International Neuropsychological Society Meeting in New York. Hannah presented work on the pupillary light reflex as an objective measure of excitatory/inhibitory imbalance in Phelan-McDermid Syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. Christopher’s research covered EEG markers of attention to auditory and visual stimuli in autism spectrum disorder and Victoria’s poster was on an eye tracking study of social attention in autism spectrum disorder and Phelan-McDermid Syndrome.

2018

NOVEMBER 2018

Undergraduate research assistants, Yian Zhang and Marta Migo, were the recipients of the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund (DURF) grant. The DURF grant is awarded to students at NYU’s College of Arts and Science to help fund their research. Marta received the DURF grant to fund her project aimed at better understanding neurological preparatory processes leading up to the execution of a voluntary motor activity and characterizing ADHD symptomology in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Marta was recognized for her research and was named this year’s Susan and Robert Grossman Research Scholar. Yian plans to examine biases of prediction in ASD that can potentially influence perceptual processing. Using EEG recordings, she will investigate a potential neural marker of prediction bias and examine correlations with severity of clinical symptoms.

OCTOBER 2018

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig presented at the 11th International Conference on Early Intervention in Mental Health. The conference’s focus this year was themed ‘Prevention and Early Intervention: Broadening the Scope’ and took place in Boston, MA. Dr. Foss-Feig participated in a symposium on electrophysiological markers of psychosis risk and conversion with a talk entitled “Atypical P300, but not MMN, amplitude differentiates conversion in psychosis prodrome with versus without comorbid autism spectrum disorder.”

AUGUST 2018

Summer undergraduate research students Christina Layton and Mateo Amezcua presented their summer research projects participating in a series of student led talks. Mateo discussed his research on investigating perceptual and attentional processing in autism using the P300. His talk described the use of an oddball task to elicit a P300 neural response comparing both behavioral and event-related potential data between adults diagnosed with ASD and a control group. Christina’s talk on correlations between clinical variables and neural markers of sensory processing in children with autism spectrum disorder summarized her research project comparing the brain’s response to self-initiated and externally generated events.

AUGUST 2018

Israel Falade joined the Foss-Feig lab as a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) student, a highly competitive 10-week program at  Mount Sinai. Israel’s summer project involved investigating the sensory consequences of motor action in adults with autism spectrum disorder using electroencephalography (EEG). The culmination of the SURP program featured a poster presentation where Israel engaged with faculty, staff, and members of the public about his research findings.

JUNE 2018

We are pleased to announce that Christopher McLaughlin has joined the Foss-Feig research team. Chris recently completed a degree in Biology at Williams College and has prior experience working in a clinical research environment. He joins our team in the capacity of a clinical research coordinator. Within this role he will be managing the ongoing research projects in the lab and overseeing task development. We are excited to have him working with us. Welcome, Chris!

JUNE 2018

Sylvia Guillory received acceptance to take part in the Sinai Team-based Translational Education Program, a National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) funded initiative. This one year training program is designed to foster innovative leaders and entrepreneurs in clinical and translational research where Sylvia will continue to develop her critical thinking and analytical skills applying them to the research in the lab.

MAY 2018

The Society of Biological Psychiatry holds an annual meeting in spring and this year’s meeting occurred in New York, NY. The three-day conference featured talks, symposia, and posters that aimed to advance understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Dr. Foss-Feig participated in a symposium discussing the use of electrophysiology in single-gene disorders to inform biomarker discovery for idiopathic ASD. Emily Isenstein and Sylvia Guillory presented posters on auditory habituation abnormalities in young adults with Phelan-Mcdermid Syndrome and atypical neural processes in psychosis prodrome with comorbid ASD, respectively.

APRIL 2018

On Thursday April 26th, The Mount Sinai Hospital hosted its 20th Child Health Research Day. This program is held annually and aims at introducing original posters and oral presentations in basic, translational, and clinical research related to the health and welfare of infants, children, and adolescents. This year, Victoria Baskett, Marta Migo, and Yian Zhang presented on some of our current lab projects. Victoria’s research examined how children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Phelan-McDermid Syndrome show impaired attention to social stimuli, Marta presented on atypical motor preparation in children with ASD using the readiness potential neural response, and Yian’s research investigated neural markers of  social orienting in autism using familiar and unfamiliar names.

APRIL 2018

Clinical Research Coordinator Emily Isenstein will be attending the University of Rochester in the fall of 2018 as a part of the Medical Scientist Training Program to pursue an MD/PhD dual degree. She plans to continue her involvement in the autism field and ultimately hopes to combine her clinical and research interests to examine the neurological underpinnings of autism and expand treatment options for people across the spectrum. Specifically, Emily hopes to study the vestibular system in autism spectrum disorders, but knows that she needs to survive two years of medical school first! Congratulations, Emily!

APRIL 2018

Christina Layton was awarded the Autism Science Foundation Undergraduate Summer Research Grant! She will spend the summer at the Seaver Autism Center examining biological pathways in the brain that coordinate sensory information. She will use brain activity measurements to see how disruptions in these pathways affect visual and auditory processing in people with autism. Read more here.

2017

NOVEMBER 2017

Emily Isenstein presented a poster entitled “Electrophysiological correlates of simulated language acquisition in autism spectrum disorder” at the Society for Neuroscience conference in November 2017.

NOVEMBER 2017

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig was invited to speak as part of an Institute at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Dr. Foss-Feig gave an engaging lecture on biomarker discovery in ASD.

OCTOBER 2017

Sylvia Guillory joined the lab this fall. Having completed her PhD in Developmental and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Boston, she’s excited to be a part of the Seaver Autism Center and looks forward to working Dr. Foss-Feig.

SEPTEMBER 2017

Dr. Jennifer Foss-Feig was awarded an R21 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine the sensory consequences of action in children with autism spectrum disorder. Read about the grant here.

JULY 2017

Dr. Foss-Feig was quoted in Scientific American regarding her clinical work and perspective on research related to ties between autism and schizophrenia. Read the article here: Scientific American.

JULY 2017

Dr. Foss-Feig discusses her work and perspective on research related to autism and schizophrenia. Read the article here: Spectrum.

MAY 2017

The May 2017 issue of Biological Psychiatry features an article by Dr. Foss-Feig and colleagues at Yale reviewing the evidence for excitatory/inhibitory imbalance across autism and schizophrenia. Learn about it here: pubmed.

MAY 2017

Dr. Foss-Feig, Emily Isenstein, and many colleagues from the Seaver Autism Center presented their work at the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, which took place in San Francisco. The lab got to hear about lots of exciting new work happening in autism research across the globe.

2016

AUGUST 2016

JENNIFER FOSS-FEIG, PHD, joined the Seaver Center in August 2016 as an Assistant Professor. She was formerly a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry. Her research is focused in the neural bases of ASD and related neurodevelopmental disorders, with a particular emphasis on neural mechanisms subserving sensory and cognitive processing. She will pioneer neuroimaging and neurophysiology studies for improved patient stratification and outcomes.