(University of Miami, Center for Autism and Related Disabilities)
Specilization: Early social development, autism
Accolades: Member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Advisory Committees to both the Collaborative Programs of Excellence in Autism (CPEA) and to the Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment (STAART)

Peter Mundy, Ph.D. is a developmental and clinical psychologist who has been working on defining the nature of autism for the past 24 years. His work in this area began in 1981 at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. At that time little was know about the characteristics of the social deficits of autism. His studies with collaborator Marian Sigman contributed to the current understanding that joint attention impairments are a fundamental feature of the early onset of social deficits of children with autism. This observation has contributed to improvements in the early identification and the diagnosis of autism. Indeed, many of the instruments commonly used for the diagnosis or early identification autism now include measures of joint attention and early interventions often focus on improving joint attention development in children with autism.

Currently, he is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami and he is the founding Director of the University of Miami Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, which serves over 3000 children and families. He is actively engaged in the study of the neurodevelopment of joint attention in young children with autism and typical development and has recently begun to examine the role of motivation and self-monitoring in individual differences in the social and emotional development of higher functioning children with autism in autism. He is actively engaged in research on the epidemiology of autism. His efforts in these areas are currently supported by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States. His work in the University of Miami Center for Autism is also supported by grants from the Florida State Department of Education and by the generosity of the Dan Marino Foundation.

Dr. Mundy has received numerous competitive grants awards and his research has been funded continuously by NIH since 1983.

He has published more than 90 papers on autism, early social development and developmental psychopathology. His 1986 paper on joint attention deficits in autism has been recognized for its significant contribution to the field by the Japanese Psychological Association (2002).