INAU

INAU is an Artificial Intelligence that speaks the language of people with autism. AI decodes the language of the heart, body and brain. INAU is a synthesis of Mental Health Care, AI technology and Science.

INAU is supported by leading autism professors, neurolinguistic scientists, and think tanks of Yale, The University of Houston, Carnegie Mellon University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Scientific Partners

Scientific Advisory

James J. Heckman

James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000 for pioneering methods to evaluate social programs and account for selection bias in policy research.

His research focuses on policies that reduce inequality and support skill development across the life course.

Peter Salovey

Peter Salovey is the 23rd President of Yale University and Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology. A globally recognized psychologist, he pioneered the concept of emotional intelligence with John D. Mayer.

He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has authored or edited more than a dozen books and hundreds of scholarly publications.

He holds a BA from Stanford University and a PhD from Yale University.

Founders

David Yang
Co-Founder

David Yang, Ph.D., principal at Visier, founder ABBYY, co-founder Yva.ai, member of Band of Angels, Silicon Valley based serial entrepreneur specializes in AI, Advisory Board member at HR.com, Top 100 HR Influencers of 2021, founded 12 companies.

Dr. Yang is a globally recognized thought leader, speaker and advisor in the areas of AI, Collaboration Analytics, People Analytics, continuous listening and Organizational Change.

Dr. Yang is a well-known philanthropist, co-founder of Ayb Educational Foundation, supports a number of charitable educational and art projects, author of numerous articles and patents. The World Economic Forum in Davos named him as one of the top 100 World Technology Pioneers.

Irina Sokovnina-Mikhelson
Founder

Philanthropic leader and institution builder with 18 years of international experience across healthcare, neurodiversity, and social impact. Co-founder of the International Association for Genetic Skin Diseases in the CIS countries; former Head of Fundraising at the Children’s Butterfly Foundation and the Naked Heart Foundation.

Her work in rare genetic diseases included establishing the first specialized pediatric department for children with epidermolysis bullosa in Russia and contributing to the development of an EB patient registry across the post-Soviet region.

In 2021, Irina founded INAU, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and technologists to advance a new generation of neurodiverse intelligence.

She is co-author of a first-of-its-kind New York study with the University of Houston’s GENES:IS Lab examining the benefits of inclusive environments for neurodivergent and neurotypical children.

Harvard Business School; MS in Journalism; BA in History of Art, Moscow State University.

Mike Romoff
Co-Founder & Financial Advisor

Technology and revenue executive with 25+ years of global leadership experience. Former Chief Revenue Officer at Reddit, Vice President at Google, and Vice President of Global Agency & Channel Sales at LinkedIn.

Mike scaled Reddit revenue from $1B to $2.2B and built a $30M+ partnerships organization. At Google, he drove $200M+ in incremental revenue, overseeing a 1,500+ person organization. At LinkedIn, he helped scale revenue from $250M to $2.5B, building a $1B+ channel ecosystem and $400M+ Audience Network.

As the father of a nonverbal autistic son, Mike brings a deeply personal connection to INAU’s mission.

MBA, Columbia Business School; BA in Behavioral Economics, Amherst College.

Rezarta Tabaku
Co-Founder & CEO

Technology risk, governance, and transformation executive with 20+ years of leadership experience across global financial institutions, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Barclays, and Bank of New York Mellon.

Rezarta has built and led enterprise-wide risk, governance, regulatory, and technology programs, managed organizations of 100+ professionals, and led complex transformation initiatives across highly regulated environments. Her experience spans technology and operational risk, enterprise resiliency, regulatory compliance, governance, and organizational transformation.

Founder of ORANA Conscious Leadership Academy, focused on conscious leadership, self-awareness, resilience, and authentic leadership development.

As the mother of a nonverbal autistic son, Rezarta brings a deeply personal connection to INAU’s mission and firsthand understanding of the challenges faced by neurodiverse individuals, families, and caregivers.

MBA and BA in Economics, Pace University; Leadership Studies, Brown University School of Professional Studies.

Irina Sokovnina-Mikhelson
Founder

Philanthropic leader and institution builder with 18 years of international experience across healthcare, neurodiversity, and social impact. Co-founder of the International Association for Genetic Skin Diseases in the CIS countries; former Head of Fundraising at the Children’s Butterfly Foundation and the Naked Heart Foundation.

Her work in rare genetic diseases included establishing the first specialized pediatric department for children with epidermolysis bullosa in Russia and contributing to the development of an EB patient registry across the post-Soviet region.

In 2021, Irina founded INAU, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and technologists to advance a new generation of neurodiverse intelligence.

She is co-author of a first-of-its-kind New York study with the University of Houston’s GENES:IS Lab examining the benefits of inclusive environments for neurodivergent and neurotypical children.

Harvard Business School; MS in Journalism; BA in History of Art, Moscow State University.

Mike Romoff
Co-Founder & Financial Advisor

Technology and revenue executive with 25+ years of global leadership experience. Former Chief Revenue Officer at Reddit, Vice President at Google, and Vice President of Global Agency & Channel Sales at LinkedIn.

Mike scaled Reddit revenue from $1B to $2.2B and built a $30M+ partnerships organization. At Google, he drove $200M+ in incremental revenue, overseeing a 1,500+ person organization. At LinkedIn, he helped scale revenue from $250M to $2.5B, building a $1B+ channel ecosystem and $400M+ Audience Network.

As the father of a nonverbal autistic son, Mike brings a deeply personal connection to INAU’s mission.

MBA, Columbia Business School; BA in Behavioral Economics, Amherst College.

Rezarta Tabaku
Co-Founder & CEO

Technology risk, governance, and transformation executive with 20+ years of leadership experience across global financial institutions, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Barclays, and Bank of New York Mellon.

Rezarta has built and led enterprise-wide risk, governance, regulatory, and technology programs, managed organizations of 100+ professionals, and led complex transformation initiatives across highly regulated environments. Her experience spans technology and operational risk, enterprise resiliency, regulatory compliance, governance, and organizational transformation.

Founder of ORANA Conscious Leadership Academy, focused on conscious leadership, self-awareness, resilience, and authentic leadership development.

As the mother of a nonverbal autistic son, Rezarta brings a deeply personal connection to INAU’s mission and firsthand understanding of the challenges faced by neurodiverse individuals, families, and caregivers.

MBA and BA in Economics, Pace University; Leadership Studies, Brown University School of Professional Studies.

David Yang
Co-Founder

David Yang, Ph.D., principal at Visier, founder ABBYY, co-founder Yva.ai, member of Band of Angels, Silicon Valley based serial entrepreneur specializes in AI, Advisory Board member at HR.com, Top 100 HR Influencers of 2021, founded 12 companies.

Dr. Yang is a globally recognized thought leader, speaker and advisor in the areas of AI, Collaboration Analytics, People Analytics, continuous listening and Organizational Change.

Dr. Yang is a well-known philanthropist, co-founder of Ayb Educational Foundation, supports a number of charitable educational and art projects, author of numerous articles and patents. The World Economic Forum in Davos named him as one of the top 100 World Technology Pioneers.

Leadership

Head of INAU Scientific Board

Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology. Dr. Grogorenko previously held the position of Emily Fraser Beede Professor of Developmental Disabilities, Child Studies, Psychology, and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale and joined the University of Houston’s psychology department in September 2015.

Dr. Grigorenko’s background is unique because of her joint degrees in developmental psychology and molecular genetics. She is a licensed clinical psychologist (CT/TX) with a specialization in forensic psychology. Dr. Grigorenko has published more than 500 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and books. Dr. Grigorenko has worked with children/their families in Africa, India, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Doctor of Psychology, Moscow State University, Ph.D. Yale University.

Elena Grigorenko

Technical Advisory

Zhenya Mirkin is a seasoned technology leader, a serial entrepreneur, and an advisor. His experience spans a variety of domains including AI, AR/VR, wearables, distributed systems, and healthtech. Most recently, he advised companies such as Deepgram and RingCentral (NYSE:RNG). Earlier, he founded an emotional AI company Entropy and was head of engineering at Parsable (fka Wearable Intelligence).

Zhenya Mirkin

Creator of Entropy AI

Scientific Board

M.D. is Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology
at the Yale University Child Study Center, School of Medicine. Dr. Volkmar was the primary author of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV autism and pervasive developmental disorders section. He has served as co-chairperson of the autism/intellectual disabilities committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Fred Volkmar

Yale University

Professor and Founding Director of the Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Program at Sacred Heart University and an Affiliate at Haskins Laboratories. She has been Principal Investigator on research projects on language disorders and autism funded by the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders and at the Yale Autism Center of Excellence. She has been a Fellow of the American-Speech-Language Hearing Association since 1991.

Rhea Paul

Sacred Heart University

Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Language Technologies in Carnegie Mellon University. The Department is the Language Technologies Institute and the Computer Science Department. Fellow of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In 1982, Dr. Fahlman proposed the use of :-) and :-( in posts and Email messages. These are generally regarded as the first internet emoticons, and the text-only ancestors of graphical emojis.

Scott Fahlman

Carnegie Mellon University

Clinical psychologist and autism researcher. Lead author of the global ASD prevalence meta-analysis (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2023) and the first population-based prevalence study of autism in Russia, a multi-site project applying Bayesian estimation to direct clinical assessment of 4,000+ children (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2026). Co-author of the Russian national clinical guidelines for ASD. Long-standing member of Elena Grigorenko's lab; currently a PhD candidate at the University of Haifa, where she studies empathy and inter-brain synchrony in autism using hyperscanning fNIRS.

Oksana Talantseva

University of Haifa

Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was the founding Department Head of Neural and Biomedical Technology Department and a Principal Scientist at the Institute for Infocomm Research, A*SATR, Singapore. He is currently the Co-Director of the NTU-NNI Neurotechnology Fellowship Program. He serves as the Chief Scientist for Neeuro Pte Ltd, Singapore. He serves on the Advisory Board of Elite Master Programme in Neuroengineering, TUM, Germany.

Cuntai Guan

Nanyang Technological University

Associate Professor at University of Washington/Seattle Children's Research Institute. Dr. Schick investigates the mechanisms and developmental processes associated with autism using neurobehavioral techniques and neurophysiological techniques involving mobile applications, social robots, and video games. Dr. Shic led the Technology and Innovation Laboratory at Yale University's Child Study Center.

Fred Shic

Washington/Seattle Children's Research Institute

Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Gonda Interdisciplinary Center of Brain Sciences at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Eva specializes in the understanding and treatment of social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. Eva is a Fellow of the American Psychological Science and the International Society for the Research on Emotion. Her research was funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and additional private funding agencies.

Eva Gilboa-Schechtman

Gonda Interdisciplinary Center of Brain Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Alison Baulos is the Executive Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development. She co-founded the Center in 2014 with Nobel laureate economist Professor James Heckman to promote the interdisciplinary study of human development using the tools and evidence from economics in conjunction with perspectives and findings from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, demography, and genetics

Alison Baulos

Brittany Miller is a student in the Developmental, Cognitive, Behavioral Neuroscience Ph.D. program.

She graduated from Prairie View A&M University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology in 2023. Her research interests include neuroimaging, gender differences in cognitive performance, academic achievement in English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, and autism spectrum disorder.

She is currently working on a project examining individual differences in response to stress. Brittany is the undergraduate recruiter and manager for the GENESIS Lab.

Brittany Miller, Ph.D.