[CogSci] recruiting doctoral students for language and communicative disorders

[Seana Coulson]

Dear colleagues,


We are excited to open the admissions cycle for the Joint Doctoral Program
in Language and Communicative Disorders (JDP-LCD) at San Diego State
University and University of California San Diego. The JDP-LCD is designed
to educate a new generation of scientists who are interested in applying
state-of-the-art research skills to the study of language and communicative
disorders. Our interdisciplinary program, the only program of its kind in
California, provides research training related to spoken and signed
language, language disorders, multilingualism, and in the neural bases of
language learning, use, and loss.


Multiple funding sources are used to support doctoral students, including
program scholarships, graduate assistantships, in-state and out-of-state
fee support, and faculty grants.


Prospective students may be interested in our NIH NIDCD training grant;
information about this funding source—including how to apply—is available
on our website: https://slhs.sdsu.edu/phd/ <https://slhs.sdsu.edu/phd/>.


Information about our faculty is available on our website,
https://slhs.sdsu.edu/phd/people/faculty. Applicants are encouraged to
connect with all JDP-LCD faculty members whose research programs align with
the applicant’s goals, and all faculty may be open to hosting students in
lab rotations. In addition, the following faculty are particularly
interested in serving as mentors and/or lab rotation leaders for students
joining the JDP-LCD through the current admissions cycle:




   -

   Alyson Abel, PhD - Dr. Abel’s research uses behavioral and
   neurophysiological methods to examine 1) word learning, particularly verb
   learning, and 2) interactions between word learning and other linguistic
   domains in typically developing children and children with specific
   language impairment.



   -

   Crystle Alonzo, PhD, CCC-SLP (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences) –
   Child language and literacy development and disorders and the many
   contextual factors that influence them such as cognitive abilities,
   linguistic variation, and disparities. Research is focused on advancing the
   understanding of comprehension models of language and reading to improve
   assessments and interventions for young children with developmental
   language disorders and dyslexia. With an emphasis on accessibility,
   feasibility, and sustainability for practicing clinicians. She is committed
   to the translation of research into practice and thus also incorporates
   implementation science frameworks into her research by creating productive
   and mutually beneficial researcher-practitioner partnerships in our local
   communities and beyond.



   -

   Henrike Blumenfeld, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) –
   Influence of bilingualism on language and cognition across the lifespan;
   bilingual aphasia. Behavioral and eye-tracking methodologies.



   -

   Laura Coco, PhD, AuD, CCC-A (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences) –
   Access and equity in hearing healthcare. Her research involves identifying
   disparities in hearing care, developing service delivery models that
   improve access to services, and minimizing the risk of noise-related
   hearing loss for marginalized populations.



   -

   Sarah Creel, Ph.D. (Cognitive Science) – Uses eye tracking and
   behavioral methods to examine how typically developing children and adults
   learn and comprehend language. In particular, she investigates how learners
   represent sound patterns in language (phonemes, words, accents, voices) and
   how this changes over time and with exposure to particular languages. Her
   work also extends into comparing sound pattern learning language to sound
   pattern learning in music.



   -

   Laura Dreisbach, PhD, AuD, CCC-A (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences)
   – Research interests are focused on characterizing auditory function at the
   highest frequencies of human hearing with the long-term goal of developing
   and implementing objective metrics to monitor and detect auditory changes
   that serve as an early warning system to imminent hearing damage that will
   compromise normal speech and language development or impair existing
   communication.



   -

   Karen Emmorey, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) – Research
   interests include the study of signed languages and how it provides a
   window into the nature of human language, into the relation between
   language and spatial cognition, and into the determinants of brain
   organization for language.



   -

   Inna Fishman, Ph.D. (Psychology) – Neurocognitive development in early
   childhood, with a particular focus on neurodevelopmental disorders,
   including autism spectrum and other related disorders with
   sociocommunicative challenges. Research methods include neuroimaging
   (functional, diffusion, structural MRI) in combination with clinical
   neuropsychology tools and behavioral assessments.



   -

   Teresa Girolamo, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) -
   Language development and disorders in neurodivergent populations. Her
   research interests include developmental trajectories in autistic and
   nonautistic youth and adults, social drivers of health, and developing
   tools for investigation of language use at multiple levels (brain,
   behavior).



   -

   Tamar Gollan, Ph.D. (Psychiatry) – Using bilingualism as an experimental
   tool for revealing the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying
   proficient language processing. Studies designed to reveal the joint
   consequences of bilingualism, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease for language
   production, language comprehension, and cognitive control.



   -

   Ksenija Marinkovic, Ph.D. (Psychology) – Spatio-temporal characteristics
   of distributed neural circuits underlying cognitive functions such as
   language and cognitive control.  Research methods include EEG,
   anatomically-constrained MEG, and MRI-based imaging.



   -

   Ignatius Nip, Ph.D. , CCC-SLP (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) –
   Speech motor development in typically-developing children and children with
   motor speech disorders. Relations between speech motor, language, and
   cognitive skills.



   -

   Sonja Pruitt-Lord, PhD., CCC-SLP (Speech, Language, and Hearing
   Sciences) – Research focuses on improving methods of assessment and
   intervention for children from minoritized backgrounds to prevent
   misdiagnosis of language disorders and reduce health and educational
   disparities



   -

   Stephanie Ries, Ph.D. (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) –
   Research focuses on the brain dynamics of control processes in language
   production in healthy and impaired speakers using behavioral measures,
   neuropsychology, surface and intracranial electroencephalography and
   electromyography. Of particular interest are word retrieval and the
   compensatory mechanisms engaged when this process is altered.



   -

   Ashley Sanabria, PhD, CCC-SLP (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences) –
   Understanding the trajectories of language and literacy learning in
   bilingual students through assessment and intervention, with a focus on
   bilingual children with language and literacy disabilities. Her classroom
   observational research also allows for contextualizing these trajectories
   within the opportunities children have to learn.



   -

   JoAnn Silkes, Ph.D., CCC-SLP (Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences) –
   Research focuses on implicit language and cognitive processing in aphasia.
   In particular, she is interested in understanding language-specific versus
   domain-general processing impairments in aphasia, the interface between
   implicit and explicit processing, and methods of improving aphasia
   treatment by targeting implicit processes directly.


In addition to emailing potential mentors, potential applicants are
encouraged to connect with the JDP-LCD Associate Director, Irina Potapova,
PhD, CCC-SLP (ipotapova at sdsu.edu) with questions about the program.


More information can be found on our website, https://slhs.sdsu.edu/phd/,
with admissions information available here
<https://slhs.sdsu.edu/phd/admissions/>. Importantly, our two-step
application process includes deadlines on December 1, 2024 and January 12,
2025.

--
Seana Coulson, PhD
Jeffrey Elman Chancellor's Endowed Chair of Cognitive Science, UCSD
CoDirector, JDP Language and Communicative Disorders, UCSD/SDSU
scoulson at ucsd.edu
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