Dr. Pinto-Martin's research on the epidemiologiy/causal factors of autism aims to inform preventive strategies to reduce the burden of this disorder. She began her career as an epidemiologist as the project director for the Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage (NBH) Study, a longitudinal study of neonatal brain injury in low birthweight infants. Dr. Pinto-Martin has shifted her primary research focus to the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She is currently the director and principal investigator of the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology (PA-CADDRE), one of six such centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control to study the etiology of ASD. PA-CADDRE is currently involved in data collection for the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), a multi-site, case-control study of the risk factors associated with ASD.

In addition, Dr. Pinto-Martin has been funded by the National Institutes of Health to assess the prevalence of ASD in the NBH cohort, thereby bringing her two major research interests together in one project. She is also working with the International Clinical Epidemiology Network on a study, funded by Fogarty, on the prevalence of ASD and other childhood disabilities in India. Screening instruments are being field tested now and the study will ultimately assess children from 45,000 households across India. Other areas of research in the Center for Autism include exploring reasons for the ethnic and racial disparities in the age of identification and diagnosis of ASD, use of complementary and alternative medical treatments among children with autism, and the screening and early diagnosis of ASD in pediatric primary care.