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Professor Alan Leslie attended University of Edinburgh, where he received his undergraduate degree, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1979/80. He spent a number of years as  a Medical Research Council Senior Scientist at the University of London before moving to Rutgers University in 1993. He has been a visiting professor at the Universidad Autonoma in Madrid, Spain, the University of Chicago, and UCLA.

His work focuses on the design of the cognitive system early in development, the emergence of abstract ideas and domain-specialized learning.  His lab runs experiments with babies and with preschool children, in addition to related studies with children who have an autistic spectrum disorder. He was a member of the team in London who discovered the ‘theory of mind’ impairment in autism. His work continues to investigate how normal development works and how it goes wrong in autism.