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I want to welcome you to the >> So as we take our seats,
My name is Marsha Seltzer and I'm the director of the Waisman
Center, and I'm just thrilled to
eighth, annual Autism: A Day be here with you today for the
cosponsored by the Autism Society of Greater Madison and
the Waisman Center and the
I just want to say one minor Friends of the Waisman Center.
program today. note and then launch into our
of excitement for us. This is the inaugural event in
our auditorium since we have
our chairs. So you are now sitting in brand
new seats.
December, the people here were Our last event, which was in
years old. sitting on seats that were 35
[LAUGHTER] So be comfortable today.
a little bit about the So I'd like to just tell you
here before launching into our Waisman Center and what we do
So this is the mission of the Waisman Center is to advance
knowledge about human development, developmental
disabilities and
throughout the life span. And I particular like this
picture because it emphasizes the family context of what we do
and also the life span context
And for those of you who have been here before, you've seen
this picture because I like to
So a neurodegenerative disease use it in our presentations.
the onset can actually be any ipoint in the life course but
oftentimes later in the life
A neurodegenerative disease affects a person's life in
multiple significant ways.
It's often the cause of death. It lasts indefinitely.
neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease or ALS which
is Lou Gehrig's disease,
are also neurodegenerative Alzheimer's disease, but there
work in that area too. diseases of childhood, and we
similar, but the onset is prenatal or very early in the
life course.
in multiple and significant ways It affects a child's development
although the course of and it lasts indefinitely,
developmental disabilities look like as a child grows up.
So examples, of course, include autism, but also Down syndrome,
cerebral palsy, fragile X syndrome, other types of
intellectual disability.
work on all of these conditions. We here at the Waisman Center
new estimates of the prevalence of developmental disabilities,
and they estimate that one in six children have a
developmental disability. One in six kids in the US.
We can imagine what that
internationally. prevalence would be
between the last time they came out with their prevalencee
estimates of developmental
on a study of 120,000 kids disabilities, and this was based
years of age. bOf course, in addition to7
implicating autism in terms of
developmental disabilities, they the rise of the prevalence of
attention deficit disorder. Of course, everything is about
to change in terms of some of our definitions, as we well
know, and so the prevalence will
accordingly. be potentially affected
to tell them that the Waisman SCenter is aimed at discovering
the three Cs. The three Cs are our overarching
goal and that is searching for
developmental disabilities and discovering the causes of
consequences for these neurodegenerative diseases, the
who has the diagnosis, for the conditions for the individual
and also to seek cures and family, for society at large,
because ultimately our goal is treatments for these conditions
for individuals with to improve the quality of life
neurodegenerative diseases and developmental disabilities and
And using the example of autism, their families.
kind of work that we are doing, I and some of this is what youhe
will be hearing about today.
is the cause of the rising So, we ask questions about what
Some of our research here is prevalence of autism.
What is the role in genetics in causing autism?.
In terms of consequences, we ask
lifetime cost of care is for a questions about what the
consequences for the family, how person with autism, what are the
autism differ in brain function do and structure from peoplewith
without disabilities. And we also ask questions about
what targeted medical treatments
other interventions may reduce and educational services and
Two of the topics today have to do with the question about how
people with autism differ in
also targeted interventions. brain function and structure and
I thought I would tell you a And you'll hear more about that.
the Waisman Center. liPeople often ask, why is itof
named the Waisman Center? Who was Waisman?
And how did it come to occupy such a large footprint on the
campus of the University of Wisconsin Madison?
So the precursor to the Waisman Center was established in 1963.
It was an addition built to a building in the center of
campus, the Orthopedic
longer exists but it did then. Children's Hospital which no
with a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.
Foundation and it was called
Memorial Laboratories and Dr. Harry Waisman was the
director of these labs. And there you see a photograph
of Senator Ted Kennedy when he
Shriver, visited the campus to and his sister, Eunice Kennedy
He was just elected to the celebrate this grant.
late 20s at that point. And on the occasion of the visit
by Senator Ted Kennedy and
University of Wisconsin, Eunice Kennedy Shriver to the
telegram. I have the original in my
office. It's really thrilling for me to
see this. It's really interesting for
young people to see it too
have never seen a telegram because nowadays many people
[LAUGHTER] firsthand.
to you. So IIt's really cool.w it
But let me just read to you some
inspiring. of his words because they are
through the facilities of this He said, it is my hope that
throughout the country, many and other such laboratories
retardation, which of course was more of the causes of mental
then, now afflicting millions of terminology that was current
that preventive measures to this Americans will be discovered and
will be developed. most serious medical problem
Dr. Waisman on the culmination My special good wishes go to
people who, through his efforts and that of the University ofg
Wisconsin, will be able to enter
of mental retardation and its and sooattended problems. field
John F. Kennedy.
room, take a look at the date on And for the history buffs in the
upper right hand corner of the the telegram, which is on the
that this was sent two days scbefore President Kennedy'sr
assassination.
beginnings of the program that So when we think about the
Center, it goes back to this today occupies the Waisman
the Kennedy Foundation, the president of the University of
Wisconsin and Dr. Harry Waisman all came together and celebrated
the establishment of the program
So who was Harry Waisman? He was the director of research.
at the Joseph P Kennedy, Jr Memorial Laboratories here at
the University of Wisconsin.
a PhD in biochemistry from the He was a pediatrician and he had
He was a Badger. university.
childhood disability. He worked on polio and PKU,
phenylketonuria.
he also took care of children And hewho were affected byntist,
developmental disabilities, particularly metabolic
disorders.
advocate. He advocated for mandatory
newborn testing for genetic diseases so that babies who
carried genes that caused specific disabilities would be
identified early and treatments could be provided to them.
So I like to think of Harry Waisman as a role model for us
today because we do provide services, we do conduct research
and we are advocates for
developmental disabilities. So the building that we occupy
today was supported by a federal
The construction grant was grant.
federal government paid for the wconstruction of this building,e
and you can see him with the
construction began. The building opened in 1973, but
tragically, Dr. Waisman died of a bleeding ulcer during the
construction of the building at the age of 58.
And so the Kennedy family asked the University of Wisconsin to
name this building in memory of Dr. Waisman instead of in memory
of Joseph P Kennedy, Jr who was to be the name on our building.
So we are part of a network of
States. We are the only center that
houses both the multi-disciplinary research
center and also a clinical and
together both components of the sWaisman Center are needed fornd
translational research and
basic findings into services and that's research that translates
I've been asked whether we are treatments.
Wisconsin. part of the University of
You can see the reporting relationship up from me to the
dean of the graduate school who is my boss.
He then reports up to David Ward
But we have faculty from all of the schools and colleges listed
on the left side of the screen. The College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences, School of
of Human Ecology, College of Education, Engineering, School
Medicine and Public Health, LettNursing, Pharmacy, andl of
Veterinary Medicine.
We have faculty from 27 Sodepartments in these variousy.
schools.
from these 27 departments all work together here and elsewhere
on campus to try to advance our mission.
We have about 600 people who
If you want to think about the work here.
Center, it's about 250,000 facts and figures of the Waisman
We have about 5,000 patient squavisits a year.ng.
We have about 90 grants from the
centers within our center. NIH, and we have multiple
facts and figures, but I do want I don't want to dwell on the
the University of Wisconsin to to acknowledge the commitment of
because it's been a long-standing commitment on the
part of the university to allocate space, allow us to
control what happens in this
relevant to autism, to Down syndrome, to other developmental
disabilities and
And that's a big commitment on neurodegenerative diseases.
We carry out research, training, the part of the university.
here. serWe do research on childity
development, and you can see a
and the ability to distinguished child being tested for hearing
backgrounds. spoken words from noisy sounding
like this. Some of our laboratories look
research. OtWe are the location of thel
neural stem cell program of the University of Wisconsin where we
use different types of stem cells to study brain
development.
how stem cells can be turned Researchers here have discovered
types of brain cells, and we're working to discover how stem
cells can be specialized and
that affect the brain, the eye customized to treat diseases
We also have a facility, Waisman and the spinal cord.
intended to produce pharmaceuticals for early stage
human clinical trials.
have to dress up like this, but there are windows through the
facility and if you would like
point we could let you look in to come back for a tour at any
happens. through the windows and see what
Facility is a really unique facility, and we'll be hearing
more about that from one of our speakers today because it's
focused on using brain imaging
It's not a clinical side. It's focusing on using MRI and
PET scanning for studying brain development and function.
The Center for Investigating
center within our center. You can see a photograph there
from May 2010 when the Dalai
to celebrate the establishment Lama visited the Waisman Center
Healthy Minds. of the Center of Investigating
here. The audience, you can see, were
sitting in the old chairs.
And it was a great honor and [LAUGHTER]
to have the Dalai Lama come privisit here at the Waismancle
Center. We train students,
undergraduates, graduate
going to develop their capacity for future careers in research
and clinical service. We don't necessarily know
exactly the number, but we
students have been trained here estimatover the years.n 10,000
So it's a big commitment again
We have a preschool, the Waisman and a big contribution.
serves about 85 children between Early Childhood Program, that
really one and five presently, the ages of birth and five,
children in each of the classrooms has a developmental
disability and many of these
And this program is a national children have autism diagnoses.
early childhood education, so lwe're very pleased about that.
We have a series of clinics.
names. I'm not going to read all the
but our goal is to provide You can see them on the screen,
and also follow along services clinical services, diagnostic,
daughter with a need for one of for famithese clinics.a son or
We have an art collection by
the art is displayed all over people wthe building.ies, and
We have 150 pieces of just
countries all over the world by people with disabilities and
they really confirm that
And these pieces of art are just everyone has special abilities.
third of our collection spent ssix months in the Dane County a
regional airport being displayed
coming and going from the airport could see the abilities
of people with the diagnoses
I just want to mention that we that we're concerned about.
Center, received two new grants for studies, two new grants from
Autism Speaks for studies about autism.
You're going to be hearing from Leann Smith about Transitioning
Together which is one of the two
exciting development. And then my colleagues and I
received a three-year grant to
the factors that can improve the focus on how can we understand
with autism during adulthood. qWe're really thrilled aboutls
that. So one other point of future
aspirations is something that we're calling the grandparents
network at the Waisman Center which is to, we're exploring
this and we're very eager to
gain your involvement. hear your ideas about it and
the power of grandparents, and We're interesting in harnessing
California that I just visited there's a group in southern
quite amazing what the power of wigrandparents can do both ast's
advocates on behalf of their
They can send positive messages to the community to change the
world that their grandchild is
There are many grandparents who have said that they don't have
contact with other grandparents who have children with specific
types of developmental
to think about a grandparent to digrandparent set of options.ke
We have one grandparent who is
afternoon, so I think we can going to be on the panel this
about this. hThat's just a new plan that we
have here at the Waisman Center.
you for attending Autism: A Day So, I fWith the Experts.to thank
And it's just very, very
here who are in this room as wonderful to have all of you
at our remote site and the well as the individuals who are
logged in to watch this entire hundreds of people who have
home. So thank you for being here, and
what I'd like to do before we move on with our program is tell
you who our speakers are, introduce you to them now, and
then each one can be coming up
So our first presentation will and giving their presentation.
who is a professor in the Departments of Medical Physics
and Psychiatry here at the UW and does his research here at
the Waisman Center
.