The Communication Technologies Research Center has three focal areas including voice and upper airway disorders, auditory neuroscience, and hearing technologies. Our voice research seeks to better understand the bases for dysphonia, the relation of perception to underlying physiology, and to develop improved assessment methods to facilitate diagnosis and treatment. Essential for voicing, our work also focuses on breath support for healthy voicing and airflow during voicing. We have a particular interest in affordable and accessible methods for evaluating vital capacity and airflow while voicing. The auditory neuroscience section focuses on understanding the neural bases of auditory perception in real-world complex acoustic environments and how that perception changes with age, cognitive function, hearing loss, and variable environmental conditions.

We are particularly interested in developing therapeutic methods to induce central auditory plasticity to overcome deficits associated with age-related hearing loss, tinnitus, and hyperacusis. Hearing technologies are evolving quickly and our work ranges from issues related to the development and evaluation of signal processing algorithms, using perceptual measures to predict success in individuals, using sensor technologies to better harness communication intent, and field trials to capture aspects of benefits to human communication. In all of these areas, we leverage training in basic science and a vast array of measurement equipment, and simulation technologies to discover novel solutions to long-standing and emerging problems in communication.