Jana Marie Iverson is a developmental psychologist known for her research on the development of gestures and motor skills in relation to communicative development. She has worked with various populations including children at high risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), blind individuals, and preterm infants. She is currently a professor of psychology at Boston University. Iverson received the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 for her work on autism. Iverson co-edited with Susan Goldin-Meadow the book The nature and functions of gesture in children’s communication. The book discusses how gesture and speech become intertwined over the course of development, and gesture development in clinical populations, such as individuals diagnosed with ASD. Biography Iverson attended Bryn Mawr College, where she received an A.B. in Psychology in 1991. Subsequently, Iverson attended the University of Chicago, where she earned an M.A. in psychology in 1994, and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1996, under the supervision of Susan Goldin-Meadow. Iverson's dissertation examined the spontaneous gestures of congenitally blind youth (9 to 18 year-olds) and compared them with the gestures of individuals with sight (half of whom were blindfolded during tasks). Iverson completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University (1997-1999), where she worked with Esther Thelen. She worked at University of Missouri from 1999 to 2003 before joining the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. She then joined the faculty at Boston University in 2022. Iverson participates in the Baby Siblings Research Consortium, a multinational project involving research teams in the United States, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom that aims to identify behavioral and biological markers associated with ASD risk by studying infant siblings of children previously diagnosed with ASD. Research to date found that siblings with high genetic risk for ASD exhibited lower developmental functioning (i.e., higher rates of developmental delay) at 3 years of age than children at low risk, even when dataset excluded children who met ASD diagnostic criteria. Iverson's current research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, studies the development of walking and locomotor exploration in infants at high risk of being diagnosed with ASD, due to the presence of an older sibling with ASD. The study aims relate motor development to growth in infants' social communicative skills with caregivers from 6 to 36 months of age, and infants known to be at heightened risk for motor and communicative delays to infants