Sydney Autism Science

Last week at Macquarie University, as a prelude to the Australasian Society for Autism Research Conference, we held an afternoon and evening of research presentations and discussions around the question "What is autism?" The event was I think a big success - despite the fact that three of the presenters had their morning flights cancelled and the running order was torn up and replaced with whoever's-here-presents-next.

One thing that has become really obvious, both through organising the event and the feedback afterwards, is that a lot of people in Sydney have a deep interest in autism - either because they are themselves on the spectrum or have a family member who is autistic, or because they work with autistic people in the community. And then of course there are researchers and research students scattered across various departments of different universities - and to be honest, none of us have a great idea what the others are doing.

As a first step to getting something a bit more concrete going, we recently set up a website, sydneyautismscience.com It's a work in progress, but so far has information about autism research events (like the one last week as well as uni seminars) and recruitment adverts for autism studies being run in the Sydney area. There are also links to homepages of local autism researchers, with a student page to come.

So if you're in Sydney or nearby and want to get involved in autism research, please take a look at the website and sign up to the email alerts. And we'll hopefully see you at the next event.