Dr. Wetherby is the Laurel Schendel Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at Florida State University. She has had over twenty years of clinical experience in the design and implementation of communication programs for children with autism and severe communication impairments and is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Dr. Wetherby's research has focused on communicative and cognitive-social aspects of language problems in children with autism, and more recently, on the early identification of children with communication impairments. She has published extensively on these topics and presents regularly at national conventions. She is a co-author of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (with Barry Prizant). Dr. Wetherby is the Project Director of the FIRST WORDS Project, funded by a U.S. Department of Education Field-Initiated Research Grant and Model Demonstration Grant on early identification of communication disorders in infants and toddlers. She is also the Project Co-Director (with Juliann Woods) of the Early Social Interaction Project funded by a U.S. Department of Education Model Demonstration Grant. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee for Educational Interventions for Children with Autism and is the Executive Director of the Florida State University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities.