Investigators and Laboratories Available to AuD Students

Walt Jesteadt, Ph.D. Psychoacoustics Laboratory.  Research is concerned with decision processes in detection, discrimination, perceptual measures of auditory nonlinearity and loudness.

Michael P. Gorga, Ph.D. Clinical Sensory Physiology Laboratory. Research primarily addresses issues related to threshold and suprathreshold consequences of hearing loss focused on cochlear nonlinearity in humans with normal and impaired hearing. 

Michelle L. Hughes, Ph.D. Cochlear Implant Research Laboratory.  Research is concerned with the relation between objective tests of auditory-nerve function and subjective tests of perception, and whether these objective or subjective measures can be used to find better ways to program speech processors associated with cochlear implants.

Douglas H. Keefe, Ph.D. Physical Acoustics Laboratory. Research aims to better understand the auditory functioning of the human middle ear and cochlea. 

Stephen T. Neely, D.Sc. Communication Engineering Laboratory. Research is concerned with understanding the mechanisms by which the inner ear processes sound, using empirical studies and modeling work to gain better insights into cochlear function.

Nicholas A. Smith, Ph.D. Perceptual Development Laboratory. Research focuses on behavioral methods to study the development of infants’ perceptual and cognitive processing of sounds, such as speech, music, and complex tone patterns.

William J. Kimberling, Ph.D. Gene Marker Laboratory. Research is concerned with identifying genes involved in hearing loss.  Screening programs to understand the population genetics and epidemiology of hearing related genes is also a focus of work in this laboratory. 

Mary Pat Moeller, Ph.D. Infant Development Laboratory. The primary goal of the research is to examine factors that influence word learning in infants with normal and impaired  hearing.  Areas of focus include mother-child interaction, phonetic development, social cognition and learning through overhearing.

Donna L. Neff, Ph.D. Auditory Perception Laboratory. Research is concerned with improving the ability of children and adults with normal hearing and with cochlear implants to perceive sounds that are degraded or unpredictable through studies of informational masking and identification of pitch -based patterns in competing backgrounds.

Patricia G. Stelmachowicz, Ph.D. Hearing-Aid Research Laboratory.  Research focuses on optimal hearing-aid characteristics and auditory outcomes for children with hearing loss.  Studies focus on interactions between  bandwidth  and speech perception, hearing loss and perceptual strategies, and audibility and perception, along with the use of auditory learning paradigms to improve speech perception in noise. 

Edward J. Walsh, Ph.D. Developmental Auditory Physiology Laboratory. Research is directed towards understanding the normal development of vertebrate auditory systems, as well as the pathological basis of congenital and environmentally induced deafness.