News

Congratulations, Dr. McKenna!

Congrats to Dr. Victoria McKenna, who passed her dissertation defense entitled "The Relationship between Physiological, Acoustical, and Perceptual Measures of Vocal Effort." She will be furthering her academic career as a post-doctoral researcher at Purdue University under the mentorship of Dr. Jessica Huber.

Victoria McKenna in front of her defense presentation

Various lab members posing with Victoria McKenna

Victoria McKenna presents at the 3rd Annual Boston University Data Science Day

Victoria McKenna was one of 15 students chosen to present her research at the 3rd Annual Boston University Data Science Day, held on Friday January 26th. She presented a two-minute lightning-talk and poster presentation on the relationship betweenphysiological mechanisms and the self-perception of vocal effort. 

Victoria McKenna and a fellow student standing in front of her research poster.

Stepp lab undergraduates present at the 20th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium

On October 13th, Stepp lab undergraduates Nicole Enos, Jake Noordzij, and Nadia Oleinik presented their summer research conducted through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) at BU's undergraduate research symposium.

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Nicole Enos presenting a poster entitled "Comparing visual-analog-scale ratings and orthographic transcription estimates of intelligibility in naive listeners."

 

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Jake Noordzij presenting a poster entitled "Effects of pitch and speech rate on the intelligibility, communication efficiency, and perceived naturalness of synthetic speech in augmentative and alternative communication."

 

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Nadia Oleinik presenting a poster entitled "Hearing Threshold and the Acoustic Stapedial Reflex."

Version 1 automated RFF algorithms available for download!

Stephanie

 

Dr. Lien's final dissertation study has been accepted for publication in the Annals of Otology, Laryngology, and Rhinology:

Lien Y.S., Heller Murray E.S., Calabrese C., Michener C.M., Van Stan J., Mehta D.D., Hillman R.E., Noordzij J.P., Stepp C.E. “Validation of an algorithm for semi-automated estimation of relative fundamental frequency”, Annals of Otology, Laryngology, and Rhinology, In Press.

 

Our first version of publicly available automated algorithms to estimate relative fundamental frequency (RFF) are now available! You can read more about RFF, download the scripts, and get directions on their use here.

Stepp lab members attend 7th International Conference on Speech Motor Control!

Stepp lab members Gabriel Cler, Elizabeth Heller Murray, and Dr. Cara Stepp had an awesome trip to 7th International Conference on Speech Motor Control (http://www.slp-nijmegen.nl/smc2017/) held in the Netherlands! Gabriel Cler presented a talk titled "Multivariate Analyses for Large Articulography Datasets of Speech and Induced Speech Errors." Elizabether Heller Murray and Dr. Cara Stepp presented a poster titled "Auditory-Motor Impairment as an Underlying Basis of Hyperfunctional Voice Disorders."image3                image2

 

VoiceTx available in the Google Play Store!

VoiceTx is a flexible mobile application for the documentation of voice therapy that is now available in the Google Play Store. The app is free and compatible for download on all Android platforms.
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Try it out and tell us what you think at stepplab@gmail.com!

Defne Abur wins a Best Poster award at the Annual Voice Foundation Symposium!

Congratulations to Dr. Megan MacPherson, Defne Abur, Adrianna Shembel and Dr. Cara Stepp for receiving the second place award for Best Poster at the 46th Annual Voice Foundation Symposium! Their poster was entitled "Autonomic and Acoustic Measures during Speech as a Function of Cognitive Load in Healthy Older Adults".

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