Autism Assessment, Research, Treatment & Services (AARTS) Center

Louis J. Kraus, MD, DFAPA, FAACAP, is the founder of the AARTS Center at Rush. Kraus is also Woman's Board Professor and Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is a federal court monitor in a consent decree with the American Civil Liberties Union and the federal attorney general’s office. In this role, he monitors and makes suggestions regarding mental health treatment at all juvenile justice facilities in Illinois.

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Holly Wiese, LCSW, is the outreach director for the AARTS Center and leads the clinical training program for master's in social work candidates. Lechniak has been providing clinical care to individuals with ASD and related neurodevelopmental conditions for nearly 15 years across school, clinic and hospital settings. She brings expertise in clinical care for managing challenging behaviors through parent-mediated intervention, training and direct intervention. Lechniak leads the sex and relationship education program for teens and adults at AARTS. She provides professional development training and autism consultation for individual students and programs across the Chicagoland area. She co-leads the Midwest Autism Consortium and serves on the advisory council for the University of Illinois Chicago’s Center for Literacy and the Illinois Act Early Task Force.

Jennifer Moriuchi, PhD, is a clinical instructor and the associate clinical director of the AARTS Center. She specializes in diagnostic evaluations across the lifespan, with children, adolescents, and adults, and works with individuals with autism and their families in therapy and consultations. She also helps coordinate the psychology externship program at the AARTS Center. Moriuchi received her PhD in clinical psychology from Emory University, where she completed graduate clinical training at the Marcus Autism Center. She completed her pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship in the Autism Clinic at Oregon Health and Science University. Informed by her clinical work, her research has explored behavioral mechanisms contributing to positive functional outcomes in autism with particular focus on populations generally underrepresented in autism research, including females, racial and ethnic minorities, and individuals with intellectual disability.

Latha V. Soorya, PhD, BCBA, is a clinical psychologist, behavior analyst and Director of the AARTS Center. Soorya has been providing clinical care to individuals with ASD and related neurodevelopmental conditions for over two decades. She brings expertise in clinical evaluations and is a trainer on gold standard autism diagnostic instruments (e.g., ADOS2, ADI-R). Soorya’s research seeks to develop and disseminate evidence-informed therapies for social and mental health needs of individuals with ASD across the lifespan. Her current research includes studies of novel social skills groups model and digital health tools to advance diagnostics and therapy monitoring (faculty page). She serves on the faculty at Rush, University of Illinois at Chicago's LEND program, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai supporting training and research programs and serves on the board of Chicagoland Autism Speaks.

Allie Wainer, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, assistant professor of psychiatry, and the research director of the AARTS Center. Wainer received her PhD from Michigan State University and completed her clinical internship at JFK Partners at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Wainer has extensive experience with assessment, behavioral intervention, and parent training for individuals with ASD. Her program of research focuses on ways to increase access to intervention for young children with ASD and related neurodevelopmental conditions. She has received funding from NIH (ITM KL2 Scholars Program), PCORI, Autism Speaks, the Fulbright Program, and the Phelan-McDermid Syndrome Foundation to support her research. She also provides training and consultation in ASD Early Intervention and Parent Coaching for community-based providers in the United States and Internationally.

Lisa Yeh, MD, is the medical director for the AARTS Center at Rush. She is board certified in both general adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. Yeh has been working with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) throughout her career. She is dedicated to working with the ASD population, their families and finding ways to improve treatment options and outreach. Yeh comes to us from the Pediatric Developmental Center at Advocate IL Masonic Hospital where her focus has predominately been the clinical treatment of children with developmental disabilities and ASD. In addition to her clinical work, she served as interim, site medical director. Yeh was also a founder and president of a medical management organization that helped clinicians start and maintain a private practice. She enjoys teaching and supervising developmental behavioral pediatric and child and adolescent psychiatry fellows as well as general adult psychiatry residents and medical students from a number of institutions. Yeh was the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award from Children’s Memorial Hospital Child/Adolescent Psychiatry Program. She endeavors to advocate for this population through direct patient care, teaching and outreach. She completed her training for general adult psychiatry as well as child and adolescent psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Sophia Martinez, MBA, is the operations manager for the AARTS Center at Rush. She has been with the center for three years, and has taken the administrative lead for the program. Prior to beginning with the AARTS Center, Martinez was a paralegal at Kirkland and Ellis, LLP. She graduated from the University of Illinois with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and criminal justice.