Dr. Sandy Magaña

Biography

Sandy Magaña holds a Professorship in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. She received a Master of Social Work from California State University, San Bernardino, and a Ph.D. from the Heller Graduate School of Social Policy at Brandeis University. Sandy completed post-doctoral training through the NICHD funded Post-Doctoral Program in Developmental Disabilities Research at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also served as a faculty member in the School of Social Work for 12 years. Previously, she was a Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently, she is the Executive Director of the Texas Center for Disability Studies and the Director of the Autism Consortium Texas Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (ACT LEND). Her research focuses on the cultural contexts of families caring for individuals with disabilities across the life course, specifically investigating racial and ethnic disparities in children with autism and developmental disabilities and developing culturally relevant interventions to address these disparities. She has received funding for her research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

Research Interests

Experience