Francesca Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the MRC Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She completed her undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and her PhD at UCL, supervised by Professor Uta Frith at the MRC Cognitive Development Unit. Her research focuses on autism spectrum conditions. She has explored the nature of social understanding in typical development and ‘mind-reading’ difficulties in autism. She is also actively engaged in studies of abilities and assets in people with autism, and their relation to detail-focused cognitive style. As well as cognitive methods, her research has involved functional imaging studies, exploration of acquired brain lesions, and behaviour genetic methods. She is the author of more than 200 research papers and a book on autism for general readers, and was recently ranked in the top 10 most productive and highly cited authors in autism research worldwide from a bibliometric analysis of autism research published 2005-2014 (Sweileh, et al., 2016). She was President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) from 2013-2015 and remains on the Board as Past-president, with special responsibility for global reach. She has received the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal, the Experimental Psychology Society Prize and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2014.