Meet Us
We are a volunteer-based group of clinicians and scientists aiming to promote the culture of self-archiving legal versions of research manuscripts in the field of communication sciences and disorders (CSD).
Collaborators
Mariam El Amin, MS-SLP
Mariam El Amin, MS-SLP is a speech-language pathologist from Lebanon, Fulbright Scholar, and a doctoral student with the Child Communication Lab at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include language disorders and interventions in the context of family-centered care, in addition to cross-cultural research in language disorders. Mariam believes that clinicians, all over the world, should have easy access to research and science.
Elaine Kearney, PhD
Elaine Kearney, PhD is a postdoctoral researcher at the Speech Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston University. Her research investigates the sensorimotor control of speech production in individuals with motor speech disorders (e.g., dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease), with the long-term goal of expanding evidence-based treatment options available to these populations. She is passionate about bridging the evidence-to-practice gap and removing barriers to clinicians in accessing science to inform their practice.
Helen Long, PhD, CCC-SLP
Helen Long, PhD, CCC-SLP is a postdoctoral researcher at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former speech-language pathologist. Her research studies prelinguistic predictors of speech impairment in children with cerebral palsy. With CSDisseminate, she hopes to inspire the CSD scientific community to become one of the leading fields supporting open access to research.
James Borders, MS, CCC-SLP
James C. Borders, MS, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and PhD student in the Upper Airway Dysfunction Lab at Columbia University. His clinical research focuses on cough and swallowing rehabilitation. James’ interests in open-science are two-fold: (1) improving the dissemination and translation of research into clinical practice and (2) enhancing the transparency, rigor, and replicability of scientific practices.
Laura Gaeta, PhD, F-AAA
Laura Gaeta, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at California State University, Sacramento. She is interested in aural rehabilitation with older adults and service delivery considerations for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Her motivation for joining CSDisseminate is to increase access to research in audiology.
Danika Pfeiffer, PhD, CCC-SLP
Danika Pfeiffer, PhD, CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Sciences & Disorders at Old Dominion University. Her research interests include emergent literacy, interprofessional training for SLPs, and effective interprofessional language and literacy interventions for young children. Danika is passionate about enhancing the accessibility of research evidence to reduce the research-to-practice gap.
Jessica Salley Riccardi, PhD, CCC-SLP
Jessica Salley Riccardi, MS CCC-SLP, is a PhD candidate at Case Western Reserve University. Her research interests include long-term outcomes after childhood brain injury, particularly in the area of cognitive-communication and in high-risk populations. She is also a practicing speech-language pathologist, largely serving children with complex communication needs. She is interested in supporting clinicians' access to research evidence and minimizing barriers to conducting and disseminating translational research
*Merry Spratford, AuD, CCC-A
Merry Spratford, AuD, CCC-A is a Senior Research Audiologist in the Audibility, Perception, and Cognition laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She is passionate about translating evidence into clinical practice and advancing the field of research audiology. Her current career goals include improving community engagement within hearing research and using effective science communication strategies to share study findings with families, clinicians, and scientists.
Lee Drown, MA, CCC-SLP
Lee Drown, MA, CCC-SLP is a third year doctoral student at the University of Connecticut in the UConn Laboratory for Spoken Language Processing (SLaP Lab) with Dr. Rachel Theodore. Her research examines sensitivity to structured phonetic variation in speech perception and its relationship with auditory processing in dyslexia. Lee is passionate about bridging the gap between clinical practice and scientific research through open access practices.
*Micah Hirsch, MS
Micah Hirsch, MS (they/them) is a PhD student in the Motor Speech Disorders Lab at Florida State University. Their broad research interests are in motor speech disorders, speech perception, and speech acoustics. Micah’s research investigates individual listener differences in perception of disordered speech and perceptual learning of dysarthric speech. Their goal is to understand how both listener and talker influences perception and processing of healthy and disordered speech to find new ways to support communication.
Austin Thompson, MA
Austin Thompson, MA, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist and PhD candidate in the Motor Speech Laboratory at Florida State University. His research investigates the perceptual, acoustic, and kinematic speech characteristics of individuals with dysarthria secondary to progressive neurogenic disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Austin is passionate about supporting researchers to embrace open-science practices to improve their work’s scientific rigor, reproducibility, and accessibility.
Kristin Szymanek, MA, CCC-SLP
Kristin Szymanek is the Director of Rehabilitation Services at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she also practices as a speech-language pathologist serving pediatric patients with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Her clinical research focuses on speech and swallowing rehabilitation in patients with posterior fossa syndrome and communication development in infants with medulloblastoma. Kristin is enthusiastic about improving access to quality research for bedside clinicians.
Erin Stehle Wallace, PhD, CCC-SLP
Erin Stehle Wallace, PhD, CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor in the Department of CSD at Longwood University. Her research interests include childhood language and literacy development, SLP collaborative practices, and preprofessional training. Her passion for enhancing accessibility of research increased significantly and Erin decided she wanted to help pre-professional and in-service SLPs find ways to access current research to support their therapeutic services with evidence.
Brittany Ciullo, MA, CCC-SLP
Brittany Ciullo (she/her) is a speech-language pathologist and PhD student in Communication Disorders at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is deeply interested in Developmental Language Disorder and the intersections between oral and written language. Brittany strongly values accessible science communication and translational research approaches.
Terlenda Lassiter, MA, CCC-SLP
Terlenda Lassiter, MA, CCC-SLP, a graduate of the ASHA Leadership Development Program and dysphagia enthusiast, is a travel speech language pathologist with over 12 years experience. She desires to see open science secondary to her conviction that ethical-based practices need to first have ethical-based evidence in research for appropriate quality of services to be rendered by clinicians for the betterment of patients and their families.
*Indicates also an Ambassador
Ambassadors
Meet our University Ambassadors who are currently working to increase capacity for open access and other open science practices within their CSD and affiliated departments!
Jennifer Markfeld, MS, CF-SLP
Jennifer Markfeld, MS, CF-SLP is a first-year doctoral student at Vanderbilt University in the Biobehavioral Approaches in Neurodevelopmental Disorders (BAND) Lab with Dr. Tiffany Woynaroski. She is interested in the factors contributing to language development in infancy and toddlerhood, and interventions that may facilitate language development. Jennifer hopes that she will be able to make her and her colleagues' work more accessible to clinicians, families, and community stakeholders through open science.
Rebecca Jones, MS, CCC-SLP
Rebecca Jones (she/her), MS, CCC-SLP is a second-year doctoral student at James Madison University. Her research interests include therapist-caregiver relationship building in early intervention settings and the potential impact of therapeutic relationships on culturally responsive service provision. Rebecca received her clinical training in speech-language pathology from East Tennessee State University. She has practiced across the spectrum of care, including the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), outpatient pediatric clinic, and in-home early intervention services. Rebecca believes open access is a crucial step towards more diverse, equitable, and inclusive scientific practices.
Brett Welch, MS, CCC-SLP
Brett Welch, MS, CCC-SLP is a voice therapist and 4th year PhD student in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders at the University of Pittsburgh. As a direct result of his clinical work, Welch is broadly interested in the intersection of psychology of communication behaviors and disorders. Welch is currently working on projects in the Helou Laboratory for Vocal Systems Anatomy and Physiology Research that leverage advanced quantitative methods to interrogate factors relating to personality, trauma, and psychopathology and their effects on communication and psychosocial wellbeing. As a clinician scientist, Welch routinely advocates for Open Science, and sees immense benefit in helping to close the clinical-research gap in our field.
Anne Reed, MS, CCC-SLP
Anne Reed, MS, CCC-SLP is a first-year doctoral at Florida State University working with Dr. Kelly Farquharson and Dr. Hugh Catts. She is interested in therapy dosage and intensity on reading outcomes, stakeholders' awareness of speech sound norms, and types of reading intervention and future eligibility for Special Education. From her years as a school-based SLP, Anne understands the importance of having access to the latest research findings in order to inform practice.
Ellyn Riley, PhD, CCC-SLP
Ellyn Riley, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Syracuse University and is the director of the Syracuse University Aphasia Lab. Her research uses behavioral and physiological measures, applied linguistic theory, and neuromodulation techniques to study language and cognitive factors, changes in neurophysiology, and communicative barriers that can influence recovery for persons with aphasia. She strongly supports easy and universal access to research and is enthusiastic about connecting researchers, clinicians, and participants in order to focus new research on relevant clinical questions.
Former Collaborators
Meredith P. Harold, PhD, CCC-SLP
Meredith Harold is a founder and former collaborator for CSDisseminate. She's owner of The Informed SLP, a website that connects clinicians and scientists with each other's work. She is a former school-based SLP and University faculty. Her present and future, however, is science communication. And through that lens, she hopes to strengthen and advance the field of speech–language pathology and advocate for the clients we serve.