Paula Smith

Database Manager

Paula was the Cambridge Autism Research Database (CARD) Manager, maintaining a database of 30,000 individuals. These include autistic and non-autistic families who volunteer to take part in research. Her role was not only quality control of the data, and to guarantee confidentiality and ethical governance, but also data extraction, data sharing, and volunteer recruitment into new studies. She chaired the ARC Database Committee and was Manager of the ARC Biosamples.

She studied genetics at undergraduate degree and worked in the field of genetic epidemiology for many years, specialising in the genetics of breast cancer. She led volunteer recruitment in the autism genetic studies funded by the Wellcome Trust, Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Autism Research Trust.

Selected publications

• Gender differences in self-reported camouflaging in autistic and non-autistic adults, Autism 24, 2 (2019), L Hull, M C Lai, S Baron-Cohen, C Allison, P Smith, K V Petrides, W Mandy
• The Vulnerability Experiences Quotient (VEQ): A study of vulnerability, mental health and life satisfaction in autistic adults, Autism Research 10, 1516-1528 (2019), S Griffiths, C Allison, R Kenny, R Holt, P Smith, S Baron‐Cohen
• A ‘choice’, an ‘addiction’, a way ‘out of the lost’: exploring self-injury in autistic people without intellectual disability, Molecular Autism (2019), R L Moseley, N J Gregory, P Smith, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen
• A cross-cultural study of autistic traits across India, Japan and the UK, Molecular Autism 9, 52 (2018), S Carruthers, E Kinnaird, A Rudra, P Smith, C Allison, B Auyeung, B Chakrabarti, A Wakabayashi, S Baron-Cohen, I Bakolis, R A Hoekstra
• Development and validation of the camouflaging autistic traits questionnaire (CAT-Q), Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6 (2018), L Hull, W Mandy, M-C Lai, S Baron-Cohen, C Allison, P Smith, K V Petrides