Dr Lucas Perry

Dr Lucas Perry is a behavioural geneticist. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2025, where his work focused on using molecular genetics methods to identify genetic confounding in executive function research. Dr Perry then joined the University of Cambridge as a postdoc in Dr. Varun Warrier’s lab. His current research focuses on the genetics of autistic traits, heterogeneity in autism spectrum disorders, and their relationship to co-occurring intellectual disability. It has been hypothesised that autistic traits, which are characteristics of autism spectrum disorders which are distributed continuously across the population, share the same underlying genetic liability with clinically diagnosed autism. Dr Perry’s work investigates this possibility via large-scale genetic studies (genome-wide association studies or GWAS) of autistic traits, using cohort data collected in the UK and worldwide. His work further incorporates structural equation modelling (both phenotypic and genomic) and polygenic scores to characterise the structure of autistic traits and how they relate to different manifestations of autism.