Nicole Russo-Ponsaran

Nicole Russo-Ponsaran is an Assistant Professor in the department of Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center, and the Research Director for the Rush NeuroBehavioral Center. Dr. Russo-Ponsaran’s research focuses on the social-emotional health and well-being of children with and without clinical diagnoses. She aims to understand the mechanisms behind children’s, adolescents’, and young adults’ social-emotional competencies; to develop improved methods for measuring social-emotional skills; and to help individuals who have social and emotional challenges overcome these challenges. She works with general education and clinical populations, including individuals with autism spectrum disorders, fragile X syndrome, ADHD, learning problems, language problems, and others. Her work developing a virtual assessment for social information processing earned third place in a recent national Design Challenge sponsored by Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Dr. Russo-Ponsaran has a diverse portfolio of funding, including federal and philanthropic sources such as IES and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), among others. She serves as PI or co-PI on three IES Goal 5 projects to develop and validate social-emotional learning assessments for school-aged children. Dr. Russo-Ponsaran received her bachelor’s degree in biology from Loyola University Chicago in 2000 and her doctorate in neuroscience, with an emphasis on auditory neuroscience and autism, from Northwestern University in 2008.