Dr. Michael Levy, Chief Neurosurgeon at Children's Hospital of San Diego Division of Pediatric Neurological Surgery and the University of California San Diego Division of Pediatric Neurological Surgery. With 24 years of medical practice, Levy's current hospital appointments also include LAC-USC Medical Center Los Angeles and USC University Hospital Los Angeles. He has served as Clinical Instructor, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery, and Associate Professor with Tenure of Neurological Surgery – all for the University of Southern California School of Medicine, as well as a Residency Program Director for the Division of Neurological Surgery at UC San Diego. Dr. Levy has been actively involved with ATPF since 2003.

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Dr. Jean Novak is a bilingual professor in Speech Pathology and was the 1st Department Chair of the Communicative Disorders & Sciences Department at San Jose State University. She is a clinical supervisor for speech pathology graduate students in assessment and therapy clinics for children with speech, language, and communication disorders. She is Director of the Bilingual Toddler and Preschool Screening Project, which is funded by the Autism Tree Project Foundation. The screening project provides students with training and offers the community a needed service.

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Dr. Doris A. Trauner has served as Interim Chair of the Department of Neurosciences as well as Chair of the Health Sciences Faculty Council, Vice-Chair of the Department of Neurosciences, and Chief of Pediatric Neurology at UCSD.

Widely recognized and respected for her academic leadership, Dr. Trauner has held a joint appointment in Neurosciences and Pediatrics since 1977. Her research emphasizes the cognitive consequences of conditions that alter brain development early in life. These include both structural and metabolic disorders affecting the developing brain. Her study subjects include children with neurodevelopment, genetic, and metabolic disorders.

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Dr. Alysson Muotri has been the Chairman of the annual ATPF Neuroscience Conference since it launched in 2015. Dr. Muotri earned a BSc in Biological Sciences from the State University of Campinas in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Genetics in 2001 from the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. He moved to the Salk Institute as Pew Latin America Fellow in 2002 for postdoctoral training in the fields of neuroscience and stem cell biology. He has been a Professor at the School of Medicine, University of California in San Diego since 2008.

His research focuses on modeling neurological diseases, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, using human induced pluripotent stem cells. His lab has developed several techniques to culture human neurons and glia for basic research and drug-screening platforms. He has received several awards, including the prestigious NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NARSAD, Emerald Foundation Young Investigator Award, Surugadai Award from Tokyo University, Rock Star of Innovation from CONNECT, NIH EUREKA Award among others.

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