About Our Project. The Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center is leading a coordinated, trans-disciplinary projected to discover the causes of autism and learning disabilities. Launched at last year’s Greening Our Children, the Autism and Learning Disabilities Discovery and Prevention Project will integrate, enhance, and create synergies among research programs across the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Our guiding philosophy is that a successful strategy must be highly interdisciplinary.

We are bringing together the epidemiologic strength of our Department of Preventive Medicine and our Children’s Environmental Health Center, with state-of-the-art research on genetic causes of autism in our Department of Psychiatry, and with research in brain development in the Center for the Neurosciences. An essential foundation for this research is the Mount Sinai Pregnancy Biobank, a cord blood and placental tissue repository that will allow us to archive tissues from the 6,000 babies born each year at our institution. This material will be available for chemical, genetic, clinical, and epidemiological follow-up.

The first stage of this project began at CEHC’s scientific workshop, Exploring the Environmental Causes of Autism and Learning Disabilities, on December 8, 2010 in New York City. This workshop – also sponsored by Autism Speaks – brought together research leaders from around the world to share their insights on studying autism and the environment and to seek their guidance to refine further research strategy.