Jan Blacher received her A.B. in Psychology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Special Education/Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Education and UC Presidential Chair in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. She has a joint appointment as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA.

Dr. Blacher is known nationally for her research on developmental disabilities, and for her expertise in autism and special educational programming. She is frequently asked to appear as an Expert Witness in contested cases involving right-to-education suits for children with autism. Dr. Blacher is she an Editor for the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. She is also Consulting Editor or on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, the American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Blacher served last year as President of Division 33 (Intellectual Disabilities and Autism) of the American Psychological Association, and continues on the Executive Committee.

Dr. Blacher is the Founding Director of SEARCH, a Family Autism Resource Center established at UC Riverside. Her research, which is longitudinal in nature, focuses on the family context of children and adolescents with and without developmental disabilities, including predictors of later psychopathology. She has published on family coping in Anglo and Latino families, and is currently studying the cultural context of autism and the transition to early schooling for children with autism. Her work is funded the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In addition to having Fellow status in three research organizations, Dr. Blacher has also been selected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).