Sonya Girdler recently had the pleasure of returning to her favourite ‘other country’, Sweden. On her last trip, she spent the majority of her time at the Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the Karolinska Institute (think Nobel Prize), otherwise known as KIND.
KIND is world leading research centre which focuses on research, development and education in the area of neurodevelopmental disorders, including Autism. The School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work has been fortunate to collaborate with KIND on several research projects within the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Autism CRC), of which Curtin is a program leader. The school will continue to build on this international partnership which provides many opportunities for joint grant applications and post-graduate student exchange.
Curtin’s collaboration with KIND was recently formalised by the appointment of Professor Sven Bölte, as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work. Sven is the director of KIND and the Head of the Paediatric Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health in Stockholm. He is a world leading researcher in neurodevelopmental disabilities with 152 peer reviewed original articles, reviews and editorials (65 first, 23 senior), 6 textbooks, and 58 book chapters. If the saying that, ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge an author by his impact factor’ is true, Sven is without a doubt a world leading researcher (his H-index is 36, 8500 citations). Sven is currently co-supervising three of our PhD students.
Welcome Sven to the School of OT & SW at Curtin. The school hopes to welcome you soon, and promise to deliver warm weather and great wines.
