News
We have been in a full, dynamic, and rich season of growing our research, our lab family, and biological family members :) Since our last news update, we have celebrated many accomplishments and exciting new milestones. We have launched studies that help us build a better understanding of strategies that caregivers can use when reading to their children to foster an enriching environment for language learning, and how shared reading practices vary in bilingual family environments. We have also advanced our research seeking to understand individual differences in language skills in autistic children. We have been fortunate to receive new funding that enable us expand our research program (more to come on this!). We have also invested in community outreach and engagement to communicate our science towards the goal of translation to practice.
It has been an absolute joy and privilege to pursue this work with a collaborative team of students and trainees who have come together with the shared mission to promote positive outcomes for all children. Our team has devoted their time, creativity, and curiosity to our research efforts. We have seen undergraduate students discover a passion for this field and advance in graduate programs in clinical speech-language pathology. We have celebrated graduates from our master’s program in speech-language pathology and seen them become seasoned clinicians making a difference in clinical practice. We have proudly celebrated two Ph.D. students from our team as they earned their Doctoral degrees and successfully continued in prestigious postdoctoral fellowships. And we are thrilled to see two postdoctoral fellows from our lab successfully obtain tenure-track faculty positions and launch their own research laboratories. As we work together to build our scientific understanding, we have the tremendous joy of celebrating professional growth and remarkable accomplishments within our research team as well.
Gratitude for our Visiting PhD Students from University of Houston
We have been fortunate to host two visiting PhD students from the University of Houston this past summer: Juliana Ronderos, rising 5th year student, dedicated her summer to brain-behavior analyses to investigate relationships between white matter brain structure and language/reading abilities among bilingual children using a large-scale NIH open source dataset. Michelle Hernandez, rising 2nd year student, spent her summer contributing to retrospective analysis of speech prosody among children with autism spectrum disorder in collaboration with Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, Dr. John Gabrieli, and Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel.
We are filled with gratitude for the investment of their time and efforts, and we missing the vibrant energy and enthusiasm these two brought to our lab environment! Wishing them both the best of luck with their return to Houston, and looking forward to their next visit to Boston as we continue to collaborate in the meantime.
Our lab meetings: from the zoom room to finally in person!
It has been remarkable to build our community and research program exclusively in a remote capacity throughout the Fall and Spring semester. After months and months of Zoom lab meetings...
What a joy and gift to finally gain the opportunity to hold our first lab meeting in person!
Very thankful to have such a vibrant and dedicated team as we embark on our first summer of the Communication and Neurodevelopment Lab. Excited to see what we discover and accomplish together!
Spring 2021: Lab construction is complete!
We are beyond thrilled to share a glimpse at our newly renovated lab space! After months of lab design and construction (in every aspect!), it is exciting to officially start settling into the newly established Communication and Neurodevelopment Lab here at Boston University. It is exhilarating to envision the innovation, discovery, connection, and collaboration that will take place in this space!