Principal Investigator

Jed Elison, Ph.D.

Dr. Jed Elison, Director of the E-Lab, is the Irving B. Harris Professor in Child Development at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development. He completed his graduate training at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include the developmental processes and neural mechanisms that support specialized information processing, as well as the putative mechanisms that underlie atypical development. Currently, his research examines the intricate developmental processes that contribute to individual differences in social communication during the infant and toddler period. Understanding how specific patterns of brain development contribute to the emergence of complex cognitive functioning and sophisticated social behavior has the potential to directly inform how scientists approach the question of pathogenesis for various psychiatric conditions. His current goal is to use neuroimaging data (brain-based biomarkers) to predict these individual differences in behaviors that support adaptive social and cognitive functioning.

Additionally, Dr. Elison is a Co-Investigator on the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS), an Autism Center of Excellence network study funded by NICHD and designed to characterize brain and behavioral development in infants at high-risk for developing autism.