Summit School's SCERT Brings World-Class Neurodiversity Research to Montreal

Every November, something quietly extraordinary happens in Montreal. Researchers, clinicians, educators, and families gather in the same room, not to sit through presentations from a distance, but to engage directly with some of the world's leading minds in neurodevelopmental science. That gathering is the SCERT Conference, and the 2025 edition, held on Friday, November 14th at the Plaza Centre-Ville in downtown Montreal, may have been its most compelling yet.

SCERT, the Summit Centre for Education, Research, and Training, is a research facility embedded within Summit School in Ville Saint-Laurent, one of Canada's most innovative special education environments. Its annual conference on neurodevelopmental conditions has become a landmark event in the field, built around a simple but powerful idea: that research is most useful when it flows directly into the hands of the people who need it most.

This year's keynote speakers embodied that philosophy. Dr. Jonathan A. Weiss brought his work on mental health in neurodivergent individuals to a broad audience, addressing one of the most pressing and underserved dimensions of neurodevelopmental care. Dr. Anna Remington of University College London offered a perspective that has been reshaping conversations in autism research globally, focusing on the strengths that neurodivergent individuals bring, particularly heightened attention and perception, and how those strengths can unlock success in schools, workplaces, and beyond.

The breakout program deepened the conversation further, with presentations from Dr. Claudine Jacques of the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Dr. Julie Scorah of McGill University, Dr. Andrew Bennett, Clinical Psychologist and Professor at McGill, and Dr. Valérie Courchesne, Psychologist and Assistant Professor at Université de Montréal, a roster spanning psychology, education research, and clinical practice across some of Quebec's most respected institutions.

For Dr. Armando Bertone, SCERT's director and one of the driving forces behind the conference, the day represented everything the centre was built for. "The energy in that room was a perfect reflection of why we do this," he said. "When you bring together researchers of this calibre alongside educators, clinicians, and families, the conversations that happen don't just advance the science. They change how people go home and support the neurodivergent individuals in their lives. That's the whole point."

Now in its sixth year, the SCERT Conference has established itself as one of the most distinctive neurodiversity research events in Canada, a place where the gap between science and practice doesn't just narrow. It disappears.