Elizabeth Laugeson

Elizabeth A. Laugeson, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS® Clinic, an outpatient, hospital-based program providing parent-assisted social skills training for individuals from preschool through adulthood with autism spectrum disorder and other social difficulties. Laugeson also serves as Director of the UCLA Tarjan Center, a University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, and Program Director for the Predoctoral Psychology Internship Program in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at UCLA.

Laugeson is the author of The Science of Making Friends: Helping Socially Challenged Teens and Young Adults, a book based on the evidence-based Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®), a social skills intervention she co-developed for teens and young adults with social challenges. Her work focuses on developing and evaluating social skills training interventions for youth with developmental disabilities, including autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and other social impairments, and she has served as a principal investigator and collaborator on multiple NIH- and CDC-funded studies in this area.