SLHS Students Awarded ASHFoundation New Century Scholars Doctoral Scholarships

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association‘s ASHFoundation awarded New Century Scholars Doctoral Scholarships earlier this month to two Sargent College Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences PhD students — Defne Abur and Natalie Gilmore.

This support recognizes strong doctoral candidates who are pursuing teacher-investigator careers in the academic environment.

An NIH/NIDCD training grant (T32) fellow and a Hariri Institute Graduate Fellow in the Sensorimotor Rehabilitation Engineering Lab, Abur’s research focuses on auditory factors in voice and speech production, autophonic judgments of voice, and auditory perturbation paradigms to study speech motor control in populations with speech disorders. Her doctoral work has focused on investigating whether changes in auditory perception are related to disruptions in speech motor control in individuals with Parkinson’s disease. Abur will use the scholarship to help further her research on auditory contributions to speech production in individuals with and without neurological disease.

A doctoral candidate in the Aphasia Research Laboratory, Gilmore’s research examines the behavioral and neural effects of the Intensive Cognitive and Communication Rehabilitation program in young adults with acquired brain injury. This work, funded by an NIH/NIDCD F31, will serve as her dissertation. Her  future work seeks to uncover the mechanisms underlying recovery and plasticity in young adults with acquired brain injury to support their long-term independence and success.