The CIRCA was established in 2008 under the leadership of Pat Mirenda. Mirenda was a Professor in the Dept. of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at UBC until she retired at the end of 2020. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and taught graduate courses on autism, augmentative communication, positive behavior support, and inclusive education at UBC. In 2004, she was awarded the Killam Teaching Prize in the Faculty of Education at UBC and was named a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. In 2008, she was named a Fellow of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She has published over 150 research articles and chapters related to autism, and co-authored two texts on autism and augmentative communication. From 2017-2020, she was also Principal Investigator for the Parent and Child Early (PACE) Coaching Project in BC. She remains as co-investigator of a multi-site study of the developmental trajectories of children with autism and their families that is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
