Meghan Swanson, PhD

Meghan Swanson, PhD, is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota where she serves as the associate director for the Center for Neurobehavioral Development. She also co-directs the Cognition and Neurodevelopmental Studies (CNS) Lab at the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain.

The overarching goal of Dr. Swanson’s work is to identify outcome and monitoring biomarkers for the next generation of autism intervention studies. Her research is is focused on the neurobiology of communication for infants who develop autism, how infants and their parents communicate, and how early communication supports brain development and later language skills.

Dr. Swanson received her PhD in behavioral neuroscience from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York where she studied the social communication of autistic children using eye tracking and worked on a parent-mediated intervention for autistic toddlers. While completing her postdoctoral training in neuroimaging and neurodevelopmental disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).