Research
The University of Maryland is a Carnegie Research-I institution. Our faculty
receive funding from the National Institutes of Health,
the National Science Foundation, and a number of private
foundations to carry out cutting-edge research. HESP faculty
have authored more than 100 books, chapters and articles
just in the past few years. Moreover, most of our faculty
are engaged in interdisciplinary research projects with
faculty in other parts of the campus.
Research News
- Dr. Yasmeen Faroqi-Shah received the 2008 Research Grant for New Investigators from the American Speech Language Hearing Foundation for her project entitled "Retrieval of action names in aphasia: An investigation of the Embodied Cognition Framework" This $5000 grant is given to new scientists who have earned their latest degree in communication sciences within the last 5 years to pursue research in audiology or speech-language pathology.
- Professor Monita Chatterjee has received a three-year grant (direct costs: $637,500, total costs: $956,000) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH NIDCD R01 DC 004786) titled "Complex Auditory Processing With Cochlear Implants."
- Dr. Carmen Brewer, Chris Zalewski, and Clinical Ph.D. student Kelly King contributed to an article recently published in Human Genetics (Morell et al., 2007) on dichotic listening and heredity that is receiving attention. Read more about their findings here and here.
- Dr. Wei Tian was recently awarded a grant by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium (CTSA) at NIH for a project entitled, “MRI of velopharyngeal structures in children with cleft palate.” The award will fund MRI scans and training for children (equivalent of $30,000). The goal of the project is to investigate the structural and functional factors related to velopharyngeal inadequacy in children with repaired cleft palate, which will shed light on the causes of failed velopharyngeal mechanism post cleft repair and help to tailor treatment for these difficulty cases. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Redett at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Dr. Slifer at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.
- Congratulations to HESP Professor Dr. Sandra Gordon-Salant, the 2009 recipient of the Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology. This award is given to a senior level audiologist with a distinguished career in audiology. Candidates must be members of the Academy, have at least 25 years of research productivity in audiology, and have made significant contributions to the practice and/or teaching of audiology.
Multi-faculty Research Projects
LEAP Research Project (Dr. Froma Roth, Colleen Worthington, and Dianne Handy, Investigators): Promoting Awareness of Sounds in
Speech (PASS) is a phonological awareness intervention program
designed specifically for preschool children with speech
and language impairments. It consists of three training
modules: Rhyming, Blending, and Segmentation, and is implemented
each semester with eligible children who attend LEAP by
a team of graduate and undergraduate students under the
direction of faculty.
Perceptual Precursors of Early Language Development (Dr. Nan Bernstein-Ratner and Dr. Rochelle Newman, Investigators): What
types of infant abilities might predict successful language
acquisition? Are there skills that, if not present during
infancy, suggest a child is at risk for language impairments
later in life? This study is performing language assessments
on children aged 4 - 6 who had participated in language
experiments while they were infants, to attempt to isolate
perceptual abilities that are predictive of successful language
acquisition, as well as those which appear to be deficient
in children with depressed language acquisition profiles.
Affiliations
Our Department is also closely linked with a number
of interdisciplinary programs, providing our students with
a wide range of research and educational opportunities.
The program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS)
includes over 80 faculty from 14 departments, and offers
a wide range of classes
and seminars.
The Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of
Hearing (C-CEBH)
includes 11 faculty from 5 departments on campus and has
a close collaboration with researchers at the National Institute
on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
, such that these NIH researchers are available to serve
as co-mentors on research projects with UM faculty. For
more information on the NIH & C-CEBH partnership, click
here.
In addition to resources on campus, our central location
means our students have opportunities to collaborate with
researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
Walter
Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), and the University
of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
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