Dr Eapen is Professor and Chair of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney & Head, Academic Unit of Child Psychiatry South West Sydney (AUCS); Stream Director for Early Life Determinants of Health (ELDoH) Clinical Academic Group within Sydney Partnership for Health Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE); and Director of BestSTART-SW Child Health Academic unit. Clinically trained in India and in the UK, she completed her advanced training in Child Psychiatry at the Great Ormond Street Hospital Rotational Scheme and PhD from University of London with research on Tourette Syndrome undertaken at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. Known internationally for her expertise in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and Tourette Syndrome, she is currently part of major research programs totalling 40 million in funding including from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC). She has published over 350 peer reviewed journal articles, 6 books, 50 book chapters, and presented in over 150 conferences. Editorial roles include Sentinel Reader, McMaster Online Rating of Evidence; Member, Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems group; Editorial Board for BMC Psychiatry; and Academic Editor for PLOS One. She is a member of several national and international consortiums including the Autism Homozygosity mapping collaborative, International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation Genetics Collaborative, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Chair of the Bi-national Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry (RANZCP), and Treasurer and President Elect of the International Neuropsychiatric Association.

As a clinician researcher, she has consistently demonstrated the ability to translate research findings covering the interface between clinical research, service delivery and policy applications. An example of dissemination of her research is that the Quality of Life in Autism (QoLA) scale developed by her has been adopted for use by more than 95 teams across 32 countries. Further, the “Watch Me Grow” web link that she developed for developmental monitoring of preschool children is being utilised in Australia and overseas in several low and middle income countries.