She received her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan, where she trained under Dr. Catherine Lord. Dr. Gotham’s early work focused on novel ways to use diagnostic instrument scores as measures of autism severity that can be applied to children across age, IQ, and language levels. She is a co-author on the second edition of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) and has been a certified trainer on both the ADOS and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) since 2004.