Chair of Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences and Senior Scientist, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney; Visiting Professor, Monash University; Consultant Psychiatrist, Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Westmead. [More...]

Chair of Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences and Senior Scientist, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney; Visiting Professor, Monash University; Consultant Psychiatrist, Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Westmead.

Awards include the World Health Organisation Travelling Fellow, Australian Society for Psychiatric Research Junior Travel Award, National Research Prize from the Australian Society for Study of Intellectual Deficiency, Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research poster prize, Annual Conference of Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research, Sydney, New South Wales – 1999.

Professor Einfeld is a member of the Australian Government Autism Spectrum Disorders Advisory Group, (2007 – continuing), and FACSIA-Taskforce Review of Carer Payment Child, 2007. He is also the Oceania Representative, Society for the Study of Behavioural Phenotypes (2000 –continuing). In 2001 Professor Einfeld was one of 2 non-Nth American invitees in the National Institutes of Health Workshop, Washington DC, to plan NIH research programs in developmental disabilities. Prof Einfeld was invited as consultant to WHO for the Decade of the Disabled.

Professor Einfeld is an Editorial Consultant for Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, and an Associate Editor, Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities. He also reviews for numerous journals including Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. He has also been on granting body review panels including NHMRC and reviews for others including ARC and Medical Research Council (UK).

Professor Einfeld has a career h-index of 20 (Google Scholar). He has over 95 peer reviewed journal publications (first author for 52 of these), 5 book chapters, 6 manuals, 2 software packages, and 16 published conference proceedings. He is first author of the chapter on Intellectual Disability for the latest edition of Rutter’s Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the world’s leading scholarly text in the field. Professor Einfeld has made over 50 invited addresses both nationally and internationally.

Professor Einfeld’s career competitive grants total over AU$6,000,000. He is co-chief investigator for the Australian Child to Adult Development (ACAD) Study, an 18 year longitudinal study of intellectual disability including a cohort with autism. It examines a broad range of biological, psychological and social factors of potential protection and vulnerability in the development of behavioural and emotional problems in children and adolescents with ID. These include genetic, family, educational, vocational and residential aspects. This study has three times been awarded a further 5 years funding from the NH&MRC, as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health, USA. A major report on the project was recently published in JAMA.

Professor Einfeld is co-author of the Developmental Behaviour Checklist (DBC). This instrument is widely used in clinical and research settings both within Australia and internationally, and has been translated into 21 languages. The DBC has received international recognition with a review by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) recommending its use. Further developments of this checklist include the validation of the communication subscale, collecting normative data in the Australia and overseas for the adult version. Western Psychological Services, one of the world’s leading publishers of psychological measures, has recently acquired the publishing rights for the DBC.

Professor Einfeld’s research also looks to refine the behavioural phenotypes of genetic syndromes to identify further gene to behaviour linkages, as well as intervention studies for people with autism and disruptive behaviours. He is currently a co-chief investigator on an NHMRC funded study on the effects of oxytocin in people with autism. [Hide detail]