News & Events
Funded Projects
Funding 2007: In support of the UF Speech and Hearing Clinic, the Florida Scottish Rite organization has granted additional funding for the remainder of the fiscal year. This will enable children from low-income families to be seen in our clinics and to maintain our satellite program at Rawlings Elementary where our clinicians work with 20 children at high risk for literacy and academic failure. This program has already shown measurable success in therapy that is reflected in the children's classroom performance.
Dr. James Harnsberger is a Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator, respectively of two federally-funded projects, an NIH R03 study on the perception of non-native speech sounds and a Department of Defense contract concerning voice stress analysis. Both studies involve investigations of the interplay between linguistic and indexical properties of speech (e.g., voice stress, speaker age, emotion). Dr. Harnsberger recently joined the faculty in the Fall of 2005.
Dr. Christine Sapienza is a Principal Investigator on two projects, a federally funded NIH R21 and a private grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation. These grants are focused on studying the use a device driven rehabilitation program that can be used for strengthening the respiratory muscles. Dr. Sapienza and her colleagues developed the patent pending device used in the funded work and are currently studying its utility in patients with Parkinson’s disease to determine its impact on breathing, speech, swallow and cough.
Dr. Rahul Shrivastav is also a Principle Investigator on a federally funded NIH R21 grant to study voice quality in patients with a variety of voice disorders. This inter-disciplinary research is applying knowledge of basic psychophysics and non-linear signal processing techniques to allow precise quantification of vocal quality. Dr. Shrivastav joined the faculty in Spring 2002.
