Brian Abery, PhD
Co-Director of the Global Resource Center on Inclusive Education and the Research and Training Center on HCBS Outcome Measurement at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration as well as an adjunct faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology’s Special Education Program. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Psychology and has an extensive background in research, program development, and evaluation related to children, youth and adults with disabilities. Dr. Abery has served as a Principal Investigator of numerous federally funded projects designed to enhance the social inclusion and self-determination of persons with disabilities, and to facilitate the use of response to intervention and formative approaches to assessment in schools. He has published instrumentation, journal articles, and book chapters on the topics of inclusive service learning, multi-tiered systems of support, social inclusion, self-determination, and health care coordination. He has developed and field-tested curricula focused on the social inclusion and self-determination of children, youth, and adults with disabilities. Dr. Abery co-directs a number of international grants focused on the inclusion of students with disabilities, including projects with the Russian Federation, Bhutan, Armenia, India, and Ukraine and serves as a consulting editor for Intellectual and Developmental and the Journal of the International Association of Special Education.

Renáta Tichá, PhD
A Research Director and a Co-Director of the Global Resource Center on Inclusive Education at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Minnesota in Educational Psychology, with emphasis on special education. Dr. Tichá has extensive experience in the development, implementation and evaluation of assessments and interventions for children and adults with different types of disabilities. Her work with youth has focused on the development, validation and dissemination of formative assessments, i.e. Curriculum-Based Measures and General Outcome Measures, for student with learning and significant cognitive disabilities. Her work with adults with disabilities had centered on developing and evaluating interventions designed to improve their quality of life in the community. Dr. Tichá is a Principal Investigator (PI) and a Co-PI on multiple national and international grants, including the National Core Indicators, a national dataset on outcomes of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Research and Training Center on Home and Community Based Services Outcomes Measurement, a UNICEF grant focused on enhancing the inclusion of children and youth with disabilities in Armenia, and others. Her international work has been focused on issues of inclusive education and the rights of people with disabilities in post-Soviet and Southeast Asian countries. Dr. Tichá serves as the editor of the Journal of International Association of Special Education.