LUCY JANE MILLER, Ph.D., OTR

As founder of the only comprehensive SPD research program nationwide and the sole researcher to be awarded an NIH grant to study the disorder, Dr. Lucy Jane Miller is in a class of her own.

The 25-year-old KID Foundation that she founded and directs is the -only full-time program of research into SPD in the world. This research was originally conducted in conjunction with the University of Colorado medical school, where Dr. Miller was an associate professor, and in research laboratories at The Children's Hospital. Dr Miller recently moved her research to the KID Foundation Research Institute, where it operates in association with STAR (Sensory Therapies and Research), a newly founded clinical treatment center that provides intervention for children, adolescents, and adults. Under a National Institute of Health planning grant, Dr. Miller coordinates a multi-site treatment effectiveness group with that has established identical laboratories for cross-validation of her research in three major cities outside of Colorado. She has also received two additional grants to help funded scientists in related fields establish a multi-disciplinary agenda for further research into Sensory Processing Disorder. She is the principal investigator for all the grants supporting these programs. Dr. Miller has developed seven standardized national tests for use in assessing and diagnosing SPD and other developmental disorders and delays (e.g., the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers). These scales are considered standards in the field and give her enormous recognition and credibility within the professional community.

The prominence of Dr. Miller’s research and her ability to articulate the science of SPD clearly and empathetically makes her a natural interview subject. She has been featured on ABC’s 20/20, PBS, and local television and has been widely quoted in numerous popular and professional publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Pediatric News, Parents Magazine, Child Magazine, and others. The author of more than sixty articles and/or chapters in scientific and professional journals, magazines, and textbooks, Dr. Miller also is a frequent presenter or speaker at conferences and workshops worldwide and has received more than thirty funded awards and grants totaling approximately three million dollars to further research on SPD and other childhood disabilities.

Dr. Miller received her master of science degree in occupational therapy from Boston University and apprenticed for three months under the late Dr. A. Jean Ayres, who pioneered the study of SPD in the early 1970s. Upon graduation, Dr. Miller spent an additional two years in a specialized intensive post-graduate training program under the supervision of expert clinicians from the Psychoanalytic Institute in Boston. She completed her formal education by obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of Denver in Early Childhood Special Education, with an Educational Research emphasis.

Dr. Miller is the mother of two lovely daughters and lives just outside of Denver in Littleton, Colorado, with Bill Whalen, her husband of twenty-five years.

DORIS A. FULLER, MFA

Doris A. Fuller is an award-winning journalist who spent most of her reporting -career covering government and finance at the Los Angeles Times. In addition to a subsequent consulting career, Doris has co-authored several books including Promise You Won't Freak Out: A teenager tells her mother the truth about boys, booze, body piercing, and other touchy topics (and Mom responds) (www.Fuller3.com), which she wrote with her lively teenaged children Natalie and Greg,. A book about being and raising teens, Promise was a Books for a Better Life finalist in 2004 and was named the Best Parenting Book of 2004 by amazon.com.

When she's not writing, Doris restores old vintage homes and builds new vintage homes in the Idaho community where she lives with her husband Ken Sanger.

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