Newest Team Member

August, 2024

Baby Augie, son of Samantha. We are all in love!

September, 2024

Our project titled "Listener training for improved intelligibility of people with Parkinson's Disease" has been funded by an NIH R01 Award. This five-year clinical trial will establish a new realm of clinical impact in partner training. The MPIs are Stephanie Borrie and Kaitlin Lansford. 

College of Education and Human Services News

October, 2024

"CEHS Professors Colby Tofel-Grehl and Stephanie Borrie Named Inaugural Dean’s Scholars."

Our project titled “A causal framework of communicative participation in people with Parkinson’s disease” has been funded by an NIH R01 Award. This project investigates conversation challenges for people with Parkinson’s disease and identifies new treatment targets to improve conversation.

We have received an Impact Award from the Parkinson’s Foundation for our project examining the combined effects of speaker and listener treatment approaches on intelligibility outcomes for people with Parkinson’s disease. This work is in collaboration with Kaitlin Lansford and Tyson Barrett.

"Utah State Today. USU-Led Research Team Aims to Crack the Code of Conversations for People with Parkinson’s disease."

Utah State University Study Examines Conversation Rhythm."

"Study finds that higher rhythmic skill translates into better conversations."

Camille Wynn graduated with her PhD today. Such a pleasure having her in the lab for her UG, master's, and PhD. Congratulations, Dr. Wynn. 

Lab members, Camille Wynn and Macie Armstrong were honored at the annual USU Robin Awards night. Camille received the College award for Doctoral Student of the Year and Macie, the award for excellence in scholarship and service to USU by a graduating senior. So proud of both!

PhD student, Camille Wynn, has been awarded an NIH F31 predoctoral fellowship (Sponsor: Borrie). Camille's project will investigate entrainment and interaction success in typically-developing and autistic adolescents.  Exciting work to come!

HI Lab celebrating the end of of semester by being locked in a room together 🔑

The NIH has funded our R21 project on perceptual training of dysarthric speech. We will identify speaker and listener parameters that allow training paradigms to be optimized for intelligibility outcomes in dysarthria treatment. Stephanie Borrie and Kaitlin Lansford serve as the principal investigators for the study, with Tyson Barrett as a co-investigator. 

The NIH has funded our R21 project. We will investigate the use of speech signal-processing techniques to overcome speech-in-noise difficulties for listeners (with and without hearing loss) understanding dysarthria. This work is in collaboration with Sarah Yoho Leopold (PI).

Samantha Budge, master's thesis student, and Stephanie Borrie presented their work on perceptual learning at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Conference in Orlando. 

Camille Wynn, a PhD student in the HI Lab, was recently awarded a $10,000 award through the ASHFoundation New Century Doctoral Scholarship. This is a highly competitive national award designed to support strong doctoral candidates who have demonstrated academic excellence. Congratulations, Camille! 

Michelle Parker, presented her master's thesis research as a prestigious USU Ignite talk titled, “With or Without Vocal Fry, Unique Voices Are In.” Check it out in the link above! 

Master's thesis student, Kirsten Pope, and PhD student, Camille Wynn, presented their work on entrainment in children at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Conference in Boston. 

Stephanie Borrie gave a TEDx talk at Utah State titled "Entrainment and the Dance of Conversation." 

“People modify their behaviors to more closely align with others,” said Stephanie Borrie. Check out more of Borrie’s insights in a piece on the use of vocal fry in TIME magazine.

Master's thesis student, Michelle Parker, presented at the Psychonomics conference in Vancouver on her work examining listener impressions of vocal fry in American women. She did a great job and generated lots of interest in this work!

"Breaking Barriers in Communication: New Research Could Improve Communication for Patients with Parkinson's Disease."

"Novel Approach Earns USU Assistant Professor National Recognition."