Tamar Heller, Ph.D.

Head of Department of Disability and Human Development

Dr. Heller is Professor and Head of the Department of Disability and Human Development of the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Director of the University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities in Illinois. Dr. Heller authored over 150 publications, including 2 books (plus 2 in press) and 4 edited journal issues, and presented over 200 papers at conferences on aging and I/DD. She serves on the boards of the Association of University Centers on Disability (AUCD), where she is president-elect, and the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disabilities (IASSID). She served on the boards of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) and the European Course on Mental Retardation, was president of AAIDD’s Gerontology Division and was a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. In 2008 she received the Lifetime Research Acheivement Award from the IASSID Special Interest Group in Aging and Intellectual Disabilities.

Glenn Tsutomu Fujiura, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development of the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. Dr. Fujiura's research interests converge on the use of demographics and epidemiology as policy analysis tools in disability. Recent work focuses on issues of poverty, risk, family policy, the intersection of race and ethnicity and disability, and on the statistical surveillance of disability.

Current major projects include a NIDRR research and demonstration project on demographic trends and emerging risks in disablement and an epidemiological study of disablement in the third world using data from the World Bank. He has worked extensively in both the creation of large national data sets in mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and in the secondary analysis of national statistical surveillance systems. He was a 1999 recipient of the National Rehabilitation Association's Switzer Scholar award, and has just completed an appointment to the President’s Committee on Mental Retardation.