Brian Boyd, PhD

Brian Boyd is Professor and Director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the University of Kansas. As Director of a community-based, applied research center focused on child development, he has been heavily engaged in research that involves the most vulnerable, and often marginalized, populations. As a special educator by training, much of his research has involved the development and evaluation of evidence-based practices that could be implemented within school-based contexts. This work led to some of the first comparative efficacy studies of classroom-based interventions for preschool-aged children on the autism spectrum. In addition, Dr. Boyd has been actively engaged in research on the sensory and repetitive behaviors of children and adolescents on the autism spectrum, including the development and validation of outcome measures for this core symptom domain. His more recent work has focused on how issues of implicit bias and race affect the lives and outcomes of families and autistic individuals of color, and strategies to address known racial / ethnic disparities. Dr. Boyd’s work has been continuously funded by both the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Institutes of Health. Currently, he serves on multiple national boards that are dedicated to improving the outcomes of individuals with disabilities and those from historically underserved communities.