Andrea Urqueta Alfaro, PhD., is the Director of Research for National Disability Institute. Andrea has more than nine years of experience as a behavioral research scientist with a focus on disability and lifespan development. She has expertise in all aspects of the research process and has lead field- and laboratory-based research using quantitative and qualitative methods, such as observational behavior analyses, semi-structured interviews, psychometric tests and health/well-being assessment. Her research has been funded by granting agencies including Lions Club Industries for the Blind, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and Nazareth and Louis-Braille Institute. Her research has been published in peer-review scientific journals and publications (e.g., PLOS ONE) and presented to academic and clinical audiences. Her research is informed by six years of experience providing counseling to families of children with visual impairment and multiple disabilities and by 10 years of teaching experience at universities in the U.S., Canada and Chile on topics including visual disability/rehabilitation and developmental psychopathology. Andrea earned a M.A. in Special Education from the San Francisco State University and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in Developmental Psychology. She subsequently completed four years of post-doctoral work examining the impact of sensory and cognitive impairment on lifespan development at Envision Research Institute, USA and Université de Montréal, Canada.