Lab Director
Tiana Cowan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is the director of the Language Experience and Speech Perception Lab (LEAP). Dr. Cowan’s research program investigates how individual and group differences in language experience influence both language and speech perception outcomes for children, with a focus on the effects of hearing loss. She also studies how children with both typical hearing and hearing loss adjust to new types of speech, like unfamiliar accents, examining what helps children adapt more easily and developing accurate ways to measure this adaptation.
Research-Speech Language Pathologist
Natalie is a Research Speech-Language Pathologist in the Research Participant Core who speaks English and Spanish. She holds her M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. In the LEAP lab, Natalie contributes to recruitment, community engagement, and evidence-based speech and language data collection for monolingual and bilingual research participants.
Research Community Engagement Coordinator
Suresh is the Research Community Engagement Coordinator in the Research Participant Core. Suresh has experience with medical translating and interpreting and provides language services for research teams at Boys Town National Research Hospital. He helps ensure that families can participate in their preferred language in the LEAP lab and helps us use new technologies to communicate with families.
En español
