McKenna is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and faculty in the Communication Technologies Research Center at the University of Central Florida.  She completed her doctoral training at Boston University and postdoctoral training at Purdue University, where she focused on characterizing sensorimotor function for voice, swallowing, and respiration. McKenna is also a certified speech-language pathologist and draws from her clinical experience to develop methods to improve the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosis and treatment in clinical care.

She is the director of the Voice and Swallow Mechanics Lab, which includes a collaborative team of scientists that use clinical knowledge and engineering techniques to study physiological systems in diseased and disordered states. She works across the continuum of translational research from projects that examine the fundamental underlying physiological presentations of disease and disorder, to clinical patient-centered applications that aim to incorporate technology and health-education into patient care.

McKenna’s research has been funded by the NIH and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She received the Early Career Contributions in Research Award from ASHA in 2022. For more information, please see her lab’s website at vsmechlab.com.