Hala Annabi, PhD
ACCESS-IT Director
Dr. Hala Annabi is an Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on creating and maintaining inclusive learning organizations. Dr. Annabi investigates diversity and inclusion interventions in the technology industry aimed at retaining and advancing women, as well as recruiting, retaining, and advancing individuals with autism. She also investigates the design, development, deployment, and assessment of asynchronous learning networks, distributed work, open source software groups, and virtual communities of practice. While at Ohio University, Dr. Annabi held academic leadership positions and co-founded the Select Leadership Development Program, and founded Women in Information Systems and the OU College of Business Honors Program. In addition to her academic career interests, she is a partner in McGann Annabi Consulting, an independent consulting firm providing services in the areas of system strategy, diversity and inclusion interventions, and leadership development. Dr. Annabi earned a B.S. in Business Administration and Management Information Systems and an MBA from Le Moyne College. She earned a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from The Information School at Syracuse University in 2005.
Andrew Begel
Andrew Begel is a Senior Researcher in the Ability group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. Andrew’s research focuses on the use of AI to increase the accessibility of technology for those with cognitive disabilities. He also studies the communication and collaboration effectiveness of software engineers in collocated and distributed development. Andrew’s most recent work has been to help tech companies learn how to work more effectively with autistic software engineers (work which earned him the 2015 SIGACCESS Best Paper Award), to use biometrics (including eye tracking) to better understand how software developers do their work, to understand evolving job roles in the software industry, and to study and facilitate the growing impact of machine learning on software engineering.
Jill Locke PhD
Jill Locke is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) and core faculty at the UW School Mental Health, Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center. Dr. Locke also is the Secretary for the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration and the co-chair of the International Society for Autism Research Early Career Committee. Dr. Locke received her PhD in Education from UCLA and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Locke has expertise in the presentation of social impairment for individuals with autism, implementation of interventions that promote their inclusion and the best ways in which to sustain these practices in real-world community settings. She is currently the principal investigator of an NIMH Career Development Award that uses mixed methods to examine the individual and organizational factors that predict successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices for children with autism in public schools. Her experiences have highlighted the importance of collaborating with community stakeholders and the reality of working within the constraints of large, publicly funded systems, their timeline (e.g. school calendar year), and with their personnel. Dr. Locke is widely published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has a number of presentations at local, national, and international professional conferences that reach a diverse audience of community stakeholders, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for her career status.
Gary Stobbe, MD
Gary Stobbe is a Board Certified Neurologist sub-specializing in the field of cognitive and behavioral neurology. Dr. Stobbe completed his neurology residency at UCLA in 1993. Since then, he has been practicing neurology in Washington State and joined the UW School of Medicine faculty full time in 2008. Dr. Stobbe is currently Clinical Associate Professor with a dual appointment in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, specializing in autism spectrum disorders, multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury. In 2009, Dr. Stobbe helped establish the Seattle Children’s Autism Center, and currently serves as Director of Adolescent and Adult Services as well as a member of the Leadership Committee. Dr. Stobbe also helped establish the UW Medicine Adult Autism Clinic in 2012 and serves as the Medical Director and is the Director of the Adults and Elders Program at the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at UW. Dr. Stobbe is a member of the UW Medicine Autism Task Force and Chair of the recently formed Tacoma Autism Alliance, an effort to expand access to autism services in the South Puget Sound Region. Dr. Stobbe has extensive experience in clinical research. His most recent research has focused on clinician training through telehealth to improve access to care. He is co-investigator in numerous clinical trials in both autism and multiple sclerosis. Dr. Stobbe has served on numerous not-for-profit boards here in the Pacific Northwest focused in his areas of expertise.