Stephen Dager is professor of radiology and adjunct professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington (UW) and associate director of the UW Center on Human Development and Disability. Additionally, Dager is adjunct professor of radiology and psychiatry at the University of Utah.

His research focuses on the development and application of innovative functional imaging techniques to investigate psychiatric and developmental disorders. In investigating the neurobiology of autism and developmental delay, he and his colleagues are studying the time course of brain development using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to carefully characterize neuroanatomical changes in relationship to noninvasive measurements of the underlying brain-tissue-based chemistry using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and behavioral trajectory.

As the UW Principal Investigator for the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) network, Dager’s group is longitudinally studying infants at high genetic risk for autism due to an affected older sibling. The goal of this research is to better understand both typical brain developmental processes and atypical processes involved in autism and developmental delay.