ANST Leadership

Postdoctoral Fellow

Rush University Medical Center

Kritika Nayar is the Professional Development Officer of ANST. She is currently a Pediatric Neuropsychology Fellow at the Autism, Assessment, Research, Treatment and Services (AARTS) Center at Rush University Medical Center. She additionally serves as a Biostatistics consultant on an NIH-funded grant aimed to improve social skills in autistic individuals. Kritika completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, with training emphases in Neuropsychology and Child & Adolescent Psychology. She also simultaneously completed a Master’s degree in Biostatistics at Northwestern. Kritika completed her APA-accredited pediatric neuropsychology Internship at Texas Children’s Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine, and is aiming toward a career as a board-certified pediatric neuropsychologist. She has a particular interest in working with medically and neurologically complex conditions with neurodevelopmental disorders across inpatient rehabilitation and outpatient neurology settings. Kritika’s research interests include the investigation of gene-brain-behavior endophenotypes in children with autism that may uncover clinically-homogenous subgroups of autistic individuals in an effort to improve treatment outcomes. Specifically, her studies involve taking a multi-method approach to delineating the visual and language profiles associated with autism and the broad autism phenotype. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Neural Science and Environmental Studies, with a minor in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Studies, at New York University. Fun Fact: Kritika was born in India and grew up in Hong Kong, and enjoys dancing, practicing yoga, and meditating in her spare time.