Hadas is a doctoral candidate of the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University. She has a keen interest in supporting the autism community in her capacities as a researcher- and clinician-intraining. Her interest in autism research began while completing her B.A. in the Specialized Honours Psychology Program at York University where she received opportunities to collaborate on various research projects that examined training memory strategy use and social emotional learning interventions for children on the autism spectrum. In addition, she conducted her honours thesis under the supervision of Dr. James Bebko, which explored the use of infrared eye tracking data to measure multimodal information processing strategies in autism. Hadas continues to pursue her passion for autism research with her current supervisor, Dr. Eve-Marie Quintin. Her master’s project compared emotion perception in music and faces among adolescents with autism, which provided support for the potential use of music as a novel strength-based modality for optimizing children’s social and emotional functioning. To extend this work, Hadas was motivated to pursue her doctoral research on assessing the effect of a school-based drum circle program on the social inclusion of neurodiverse children. Her research proposal for this work was awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship. Moreover, Hadas was a former trainee of the national Autism Research Training program and is a current trainee of the Quebec Autism Research Training program, which have both played an instrumental role in broadening her understanding of autism and knowledge translation skills. Furthermore, Hadas has the pleasure of regularly working with neurodiverse people at various school and outpatient pediatric settings. This clinical experience has allowed her to learn about the barriers to accessing educational and health services for the autism community, the demand for evidence-based treatments in the public system, and the need for a tailored versus a one-size-fits all approach to patient care. As a KBHN trainee, Hadas is enthusiastic about improving her understanding of how researchers, service providers, people on the autism spectrum, and policymakers, can collaborate to better cater to the needs of the autism community, which will invaluably contribute to her future research and clinical endeavors within the field of autism.
