Postdoctoral Research – Pragmatic Language Phenotypes in Autism

February 24, 2026

Northwestern University’s Neurodevelopmental Diversity Laboratory (NDL), directed by Dr. Molly Losh
, is seeking a postdoctoral scholar to join our research team.

The lab is currently conducting an NIH-funded project (R01DC
021849) focused on pragmatic language phenotypes in autism, using a cross-linguistic design across typo logically diverse languages (English and Mandarin) to delineate biological and environmental contributions to social communication skills across the autism spectrum. By leveraging these typo logically distinct languages, the study aims to characterize clinically and biologically meaningful traits among autistic speakers across linguistic systems, thereby shedding light on core neurobiological mechanisms underlying social communication in autism.

The postdoctoral scholar will play a central role in implementing this project, with primary responsibility for leading testing sessions of Mandarin‑speaking autistic individuals and their families, as well as non‑autistic peers. This includes clinical‑behavioral characterization; conversational and narrative language elicitation; and behavioral and neurophysiological experiments. The postdoctoral scholar will also contribute to data preprocessing, participate in discourse and computational linguistic analyses, lead scholarly publications, assist with recruitment efforts, and coordinate with our team of collaborators.

The successful candidate will have opportunities to develop independent research and pursue external funding.

• To develop new ideas, research methodologies, and analytic approaches to the lab's research programs
• Conduct experiments and analyses related to linguistic, cognitive, neurophysiological, and clinical phenotypes in autism, with a focus on Mandarin‑speaking populations.
• To supervise students and research staff working in the lab
• To help write and contribute to publications resulting from research done in the lab
• To assist project management of NIH grants

• PhD in communication sciences and disorders, psychology, linguistics, or a related field
• Interest in research on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions
• Evidence of research productivity (e.g., peer‑reviewed publications)

• Bilingual or multilingual proficiency in spoken and written Mandarin and English for cross‑linguistic research

• Research and clinical training related to autism or other neurodevelopmental conditions
• Demonstration of research independence

• Experience in language‑related research
• Expertise in formal and discourse language analysis
• Strong quantitative analytic skills
• Excellent oral communication and writing skills

Applicants can email both Anne Taylor and Dr. Molly Losh.