Caitlin Conner, Ph.D.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and a licensed clinical psychologist. My research interests are in co-occurring mental health conditions in autism, including suicidality, and how underlying issues like emotion dysregulation and emotional awareness affect mental health in autistic teens and adults. After receiving my undergraduate at Pitt (hail to Pitt!), I earned my master’s and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Virginia Tech and completed my predoctoral internship at JFK Partners at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Then, I returned to Pitt for my postdoc training with Carla Mazefsky (my first mentor in undergrad!). In the REAACT lab, I work on EASE (a mindfulness-based intervention targeting emotion regulation for autistic individuals that I co-developed) and on measure development projects (REALS and EDI self-report). For ACE, I am MPI on Project 1 to develop a self-report measure of risk for suicidality in autistic people (the Autism Suicidality Inventory), Co-Investigator on the Clinical Core (helping with diagnosing autism and co-occurring mental health concerns), and Co-Investigator on Project 2, which is using phone-based questionnaires and physiological measures in the real world to learn about emotion regulation, aggressive, and suicidality in autistic adults. In my spare time, I love to bake cookies, travel, and trying to retain/learn Italian and Spanish.