Dr. Leslie Neely

Dr. Leslie Neely, BCBA-D, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the coordinator for the UTSA program for behavior analysis (https://www.abautsa.com/) and director of the Institute for Child and Youth Policy and Research (http://capri.utsa.edu/). Dr. Neely earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from UT-Austin and a master’s degree in educational psychology (majoring in special education and applied behavior analysis) from Texas A&M University. Dr. Neely received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2015, where she trained in the use of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) to treat severe and self-injurious behavior in people with Autism, Mental and Developmental Disabilities (AUIDD).

Dr. Neely’s research is focused on advancing the treatment of problem behaviors in individuals with AUIDD using the science of ABA. It advances science by (1) exploring novel technological applications such as telehealth, artificial intelligence, and virtual / augmentative reality in the assessment and treatment process, and (2) developing preventive interventions for infants and young children to prevent the progression of symptomology. She engages local and international transdisciplinary teams in her work, including computer scientists, engineers, special educators, neurologists, developmental pediatricians and community leaders, to tackle research questions with multiple levels of analysis.

She is currently PI for the PLAAY project (parent-led autism treatment for young infants and young children at risk). The PLAAY project (http://www.projectplaay.org) aims to identify infants and young children at high risk of developing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and a radical, innovative parent-assisted treatment program for old age infants of 6 months to create.