2025

September 15, 2025, Dr. Jason Griffin, Assistant Professor, was awarded a 5-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The funded project, titled “Investigating Neural Predictors of Real-World Social Attention in Autism During Naturalistic Social Interactions,” will use innovative ambulatory eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) methods to study how autistic and neurotypical children attend to faces during live, face-to-face interactions. 

June 5, 2025, Dr. Jason Griffin received the NOMIS and Science Young Explorer Award for his innovative approaches to autism research. The NOMIS foundation hosted a ceremony for this award at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, where Dr. Griffin gave a talk about his bold and innovative approaches in autism research. See press release here. 

April 25, 2025, Dr. Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, received the 2025 Esther Farfel Award, the University of Houston’s highest faculty honor. This award is given to faculty who are transforming their respective disciplines through groundbreaking research, teaching excellence, and service to the community. 

April 25, 2025, Dr. J. Leigh Leasure received a University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Leasure was nominated for this award by students, and received it after 4 classroom visits by faculty judges. The award reflects her passion for classroom teaching.