Lauren Kenworthy, PhD

Lauren Kenworthy, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Children’s National Hospital and professor of Neurology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. She received a B.A. from Yale University and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She completed her internship and residency training in clinical psychology/pediatric neuropsychology at Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, Johns Hopkins Medical School and Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital. She has been on the faculty at Children’s National and GW since 1995.

Dr. Kenworthy's research interests are in describing and treating the neuropsychological phenotype of autism. She is an author of more than 60 peer-reviewed publications documenting non-social deficits in autism. She is a co-author of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), which has been used in over 1,000 research publications to document executive functioning in various clinical groups. Her recent publications have focused on the role of executive dysfunction in autism and its treatment. She is author of a school-based, executive function intervention for children on the autism spectrum, Unstuck and On Target. She is currently completing a trial of Unstuck in low-income schools for children with ADHD and ASD.

Dr. Kenworthy is the author of three books and multiple chapters on autism that requires minimal or no special assistance and executive functions. She also collaborates on functional imaging projects at the NIMH and Georgetown University. A national and international speaker on autism spectrum disorders and executive functions, Dr. Kenworthy also serves on dissertation committees and as a journal reviewer.