William J. McIlvane
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Dr. William J. McIlvane has the rank of professor in both the Departments of Pediatrics and of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and also serves as Executive Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center. In addition to his basic innovative and influential work in stimulus control and the conditions leading to emergence of abstract relational functions, he has successfully applied this research to the teaching of those with severe intellectual disabilities. For example, he has developed a research and development program called Praxis Technology Transfer to efficiently train people with developmental disabilities in complex skills. His collaboration with colleagues in Brazil has been particularly fruitful in development of applications of his stimulus control research to instructional innovation in public schools. He has consistently received external funding for his work and is the author of more than 100 scholarly papers and book chapters and has edited two books. He has served on National Institutes of Health review panels and on the editorial boards of several behavioral journals, including the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and The Behavior Analyst, and as associate editor of the American Journal on Mental Retardation.