Bucknell Psychology Professor Earns Prestigious Fellowship from Cambridge University

Bucknell Professor David Evans, psychology, will seek to map the brain's role in the repetitive behaviors that characterize conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism through a prestigious visiting fellowship from The University of Cambridge in England.

Evans, an expert in neurodevelopmental disorders and repetitive behaviour in particular, is collaborating with Cambridge researchers Barbara Sahakian, Trevor Robbins and Simon Baron-Cohen through a Clare Hall Visiting Fellowship. Their project will examine the cognitive, neuropsychological and neural similarities and differences between children with obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism spectrum disorders.

The highly competitive Clare Hall Fellowships are only awarded to researchers who have made a substantial contribution to their fields, who have an excellent record of publication and who enjoy an international reputation for intellectual achievement.

"The exciting thing about this fellowship is that it is a lifelong affiliation, so I will have the opportunity to return over the years," Evans said. "Needless to say, I am really pleased and excited to have this honor and to be able to collaborate with such great minds."

In his career in autism research, Evans has previously created screening tools to study the heritability of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism in families and has achieved new insights about the neural and genetic roots of autism and other disorders.