Mackenzie Salt is an autistic researcher whose work focuses on autistic adults.
Meet Dr. Mackenzie Salt. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University and a member of the McMaster University Autism Research Team (MacART).
Dr. Salt has been studying language and communication abilities in autism with a focus on autistic adults since he started his masters degree at Western University in 2009. He was inspired to do this after working with others on the spectrum and noting that their interactions and conversations with each other went better than the research literature suggested.
Dr. Salt completed his PhD in Cognitive Science of Language at McMaster University in 2019. In his doctoral thesis, he developed a new method for studying language abilities in autistic adults that focuses on what autistic adults can do rather than what they cannot do. Since then, he has worked as a researcher with MacART and also several autism non-profit organizations.
He worked on a part-time basis as a User Experience (UX) Consultant for Autism Speaks Canada, where he applied his unique perspective, experience, and research abilities to a number of projects including evaluating and improving the CONNECT platform. He was also responsible for administering, analysing, and reporting the findings of the Pandemic Canadian Autism Needs Assessment survey, a joint partnership by Autism Speaks Canada, the Autism Alliance of Canada (formerly known as the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorder Alliance) and MacART to determine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the autism community.
Dr. Salt spoke about the need for equity across the autism spectrum at the 2020 CASDA Summit. To encourage this, he has joined the inaugural editorial board for the Canadian Journal of Autism Equity, a new community-run open-access journal that aims to elevate autistic and other marginalised voices.
Join Dr. Mackenzie Salt in his journey to continue understanding autism, and support the funding of important scientific research to discover breakthroughs.