Research
Student Association for Research and Teaching
Mission
The Student Association for Research and Teaching in Communication Sciences and Disorders (START-CSD) serves as the unified voice and community hub for PhD students in our program. We are committed to fostering academic excellence, professional development, and collaborative relationships among students, faculty, and the broader research community in hearing, speech, language, and ASL sciences. These goals will be met by hosting research colloquia and social outings, and by facilitating student-faculty interactions. Through regular programming, advocacy efforts, and community-building initiatives, we aim to ensure that every student in our program has access to the resources, support, and opportunities needed to succeed in their academic journey and future careers in research and teaching.
Members
Faculty
Dr. Ozmeral, Erol J., Ph.D.
Dr. Ozmeral joined CSD in 2013 as a postdoc, and he is currently the director of the Auditory Neurosciences & Technology Laboratory at the Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research. Dr. Ozmeral is a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in psychoacoustics and electrophysiology. He has primarily led research on the behavioral and neural mechanisms associated with sensorineural hearing loss across the adult lifespan. His research interests are in cognitive aging, speech perception, spatial attention, and emerging technologies in hearing instruments, including brain-computer interfaces. Erol is currently funded by the NIH as well as the hearing aid and commercial hearing device industry.
Students
President: Anna Soares, M.S.
Anna Soares is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the èAV. She received her B.S. in Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and her M.S. in Neuroengineering from the Santos Dumont Institute, both in Brazil. During her master’s program, she developed a combined intervention protocol integrating speech-language stimulation with transcranial electrical stimulation to assess the impact of this approach on social communication and language development in children with autism. At USF, Anna’s doctoral research focuses on validating a screener designed to identify risk of Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) in bilingual children. She is an active member of the Bilingual Language and Literacy Lab, which focuses on identifying the best language assessment and intervention practices for bilingual children at risk of academic difficulties.
As President of START CSD, she is committed to fostering collaboration among students, faculty, and the broader community. Her work emphasizes creating inclusive spaces for dialogue, supporting professional growth, and strengthening connections that enhance both academic and community engagement.
Vice-President: Dimitri Brunelle, B.A.
Dimitri Brunelle is a fifth-year Hearing Science PhD student in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the èAV. He received his BA in Psychology at USF and initially started his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His previous research focused on using behavioral auditory neuroscience approaches to better understand the aging auditory system and to develop methodologies to refine hearing screening metrics in the mouse model, and on completing an undergraduate honors thesis on music cognition, entitled “Towards a Neural Representation of Music-Language Overlap: The Harmonic Prediction Violation Norming Model”. Since then, he has focused on auditory systems neuroscience, utilizing in vivo and in vitro neurophysiology techniques to investigate the central auditory system under various pathological states. His dissertation work aims to harness central auditory plasticity in response to targeted sound therapies to ameliorate age-related hearing loss.
As Vice-President of START-CSD, he is devoted to promoting meaningful connections between students and faculty and facilitating cross-talk throughout the USF CSD community. He primarily handles the behind-the-scenes work of maintaining START-CSD's student organization status with USF.
Treasurer: Fiorella Wu Cam, B.A.
Fiorella Wu is a second-year PhD student in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the èAV. Originally from Peru, she came to the United States to pursue her bachelor’s degree at USF, where she studied Communication Sciences and Disorders and Psychology. Her research interests center on exploring the barriers that influence access to hearing interventions. She is also passionate about developing educational strategies and clinical practices that improve equity in hearing healthcare. Fiorella’s long-term goal is to pursue a dual AuD/PhD program, combining clinical expertise with research in hearing sciences.
As Treasurer of START CSD, she is dedicated to supporting the organization’s academic and social initiatives and ensuring that resources are used to strengthen community engagement and professional growth among students.
Secretary: Lucy Agbo, M.A.
Lucy Agbo is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the èAV. She earned her B.A. in French Language and Literature and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics. Her research focuses on bilingualism, language development, and literacy, with particular attention to grammatical development across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. Fluent in English, Idoma, and French, Lucy brings a rich multilingual perspective to her academic and professional work. At USF, she is a member of the Bilingual Language and Literacy Lab, where she contributes to projects aimed at improving assessment and intervention practices for bilingual children at risk of developmental language disorder.
As Secretary of START CSD, she fosters collaboration and engagement among CSD students, faculty, and the broader community.
Conferences
Agbo, L E., & Debrard, A. (March, 2026). Subordinate Clause Use in Children with SLI: A Narrative-Based Analysis. USF Graduate and Postgraduate Research Symposium, Tampa, FL.
This study examines the relationship between vocabulary and complex syntax during narrative production in children with Language Impairment (LI), aged 8-9. Typically developing children demonstrated greater lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, while children with LI produced fewer complex sentences and more tense errors, even after controlling for lexical diversity. These findings highlight the close relationship between vocabulary and syntax and suggest that intervention should target both simultaneously, using strategies such as visual supports and modeling varied sentence structures during narrative production. Future research with larger samples and varied narrative prompts is needed to further examine the reciprocal relationship between vocabulary and syntax.
Kapolowicz & Brunelle et al. (2026). Perception of Novel Words in Noise by Cochlear Implant Users (poster presentation). 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Philadelphia, PA.
Here, we demonstrate a training paradigm that disentangles how cochlear implant users leverage context to improve their speech-in-noise comprehension.
Ortiz, J., Soares, A. K. A., Nolasco, J., Risueño, R. J., Restrepo, M. A., & Gray, S. (2026). Exploring the feasibility of automated language sample analysis for bilingual children [Poster presentation]. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
This study explored whether automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) could support more efficient language-sample analysis for Spanish-English bilingual children. We compared automated and manually derived measures of language ability and examined their diagnostic accuracy. Preliminary findings showed strong associations between automated and manual measures, with composite automated models demonstrating diagnostic performance comparable to manual analysis. The findings highlight the potential of automated language sample analysis while emphasizing the need for models specifically developed for bilingual children.
Agbo, L E., Martinez-Neito, L., & Restrepo, M. A. (June, 2025). Effect of Age on Preposition Development in Children with Developmental Language Disorder: A Comparative Study (Poster presentation). Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders (SRCLD).
This study examined age-related patterns in English preposition production among Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across Pre-K, first grade, and third grade. The findings showed that preposition use increased primarily during the early school years, with differences between groups becoming less pronounced at later grades.
Soares, A. K. A., Gray, S., & Restrepo, M. A. (2025, May). Key linguistic predictors of developmental language disorder risk in bilingual assessment [Poster presentation]. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.
This study examined which components of the Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (SSLIC) best identify Spanish-English bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorder (DLD). Using data from 713 children ages 5–7, we evaluated five SSLIC subtests and identified the items that most effectively differentiated children with and without DLD risk. A reduced set of high-performing items achieved approximately 85% classification accuracy, supporting the potential of a shorter, more efficient screening tool for bilingual children.
Venne, J., Broome, E., & Peters-Sanders, L. (2025, November 21). Speech sound disorders: Decoding the impact of phonological awareness interventions - A meta-analysis [Meritorious poster presentation]. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, Washington, DC.
Children with phonological impairment are at increased risk for reading difficulty. An estimated 25% of children with speech sound disorder (SSD) show signs of reading problems. Based on the theory that the phonological awareness system needed for reading also underpins speech, researchers have examined the effects of various interventions for children with SSD that target PA with or without explicit speech instruction. This poster presented a systematic review, quality assessment, and meta-analysis of studies conducted with three- to eight-year-old children with SSD in the past 25 years. Results may help inform best practices for clinicians and researchers working with children with SSD.
Venne, J., & Goldstein, H. (2025, November 21). PAth to speech and literacy [Poster presentation]. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, Washington, DC.
This presentation included preliminary results of an integrated speech and phonological awareness intervention designed to improve both articulation and literacy skills in preschool and kindergarten children with speech sound disorder (SSD). The intervention is a modified version of the Tier 2 PAth to Literacy program, targeting grapheme-phoneme correspondence, blending, segmenting, first-part and first-sound fluency, and, for this study, enhanced with targeted expressive phonology instruction. The scripted, 12-unit intervention was implemented in a pediatric outpatient therapy setting by SLPs and SLP-Assistants. We used a multiple baseline experimental design. Preliminary results reveal positive trends and moderate-to-large effect sizes for two of three children in articulation, all three children in first sound identification, and two of three children in blending.
Awards
Anna Soares
- Student Employee of the Year, 2026
College of Behavioral and Community Sciences (CBCS), USF - Laura Bassi Foundation Publication Support Award, 2026
Laura Bassi Foundation - Graduate Student Scholarship, ASHFoundation, 2025
American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation - Student Travel Award, 2025
45th Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders - Honorable Mention in Neuromodulation, 2025
2025 North American Neuromodulation Society Annual Meeting - Research Mentoring-Pair Travel Award, ASHA, 2024
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Celine Davis
- Best Overall Rehabilitation Technology, 2025
American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) LaunchPad - NIDCD-funded mentoring award (R13 DC017375), 2025
Academy of Aphasia NIDCD-Sponsored Mentoring Award - Student Travel Award
USF Annual Graduate Research Symposium People’s Choice
Claire Dorey
- NIH/NIDCD Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32), 2025-2028
Parallel Training in Human and Animal Studies to Evaluate the Effects of Age-Related Changes to Extended High-Frequency Sensitivity and Cognition on Higher-Order Auditory Processing
David Ajayi
- Student Travel Scholarship, 2026
Neuroscience for the Everyday World - National Aphasia Association Research Grant, 2025
National Aphasia Association - Student Travel Scholarship, 2025
National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing
Dimitri Brunelle
- Genshaft Family Doctoral Fellowship, 2026
Honors College, èAV
Jennifer Venne
- Meritorious Poster Presentation Award, 2025
Venne, J., Broome, E., and Peters-Sanders, L. Speech Sound Disorders: Decoding the Impact of Phonological Awareness Interventions - A Meta-Analysis.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Lucy Agbo
- MSLP ASHA’s Student Leadership Program, 2026
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association - International Travel Grant, 2025
Graduate Office, èAV - Student Travel Award, 2025
45th Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders
Recent Publications by Graduate Students
Agbo, L., Nieto-Martinez, L., & Restrepo, M. A. (2026). English Preposition Use in Bilingual Children with and without Developmental Language Disorders: A Longitudinal Study. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (In Press)
Dorey, C. M., Eddins, D. A., Secor, C. A., Higgins, N. C., Eddins, A. C., & Ozmeral, E. J. (2026). Reference Dataset of Extended High Frequency Audiometry in Young, Middle, and Older Populations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. (In Press)
Davis, C., Ajayi, D., & Imaezue, G. C. (2026). Speech synchronization techniques for improving speech and language outcomes in aphasia: a systematic review. Aphasiology, 1–39.
Davis, C., Ajayi, D. I., Salas, C., Poindexter, K. L., & Imaezue, G. C. (2026). New patterns of pathological language mixing in bilingual aphasia. Aphasiology, 1–11.
Brunelle, D. L., Park, C. R., Fawcett, T. J., & Walton, J. P. (2025). Signal-in-noise detection across the lifespan in a mouse model of presbycusis. Hearing Research, 455, 109153.
Soares, A. K. A., Sousa, L. A. N., Campos, L. G. N., Seyffarth, M. C., Aprígio, L.C.S., Simplício, H. G., & Brasil, F. L. (2025). Impact of Language Training and Transcranial Electrical Stimulation on Communication in Autism: A Clinical Trial. Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface, 28(7), S91.
Brunelle D.L. and Llano D.A. (2023). Role of audio-somatosensory corticothalamic circuit integration in analgesia. Cell Calcium, 111, 102717.
Co-authored with Faculty Members
Martinez-Nieto, L., Ames, K., Restrepo, M. A., Mesa, C., Pierce-Rivera, M., Moen, T., & Agbo, L. (2026). Trajectories of Syntactic Complexity and Subordination Across Spanish and English in Bilingual Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder. Frontier. (In Print)
Imaezue, G. C., Maram, K. V., Ajayi, D., Alohali, I., & Butta, R. K. (2026). Preclinical dialogue simulation: Evaluating response accessibility in conversational artificial intelligence for aphasia therapy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 69(8), 3781–3796.
Kapolowicz M.R., Montazeri V., Brunelle D.L., Krause J.C. and Assmann P.F (2026). Generalization of Repetition-Based Segregation with Novel Sounds and Nonsense Speech. JASA Express Lett. 6, 044403.
Pak, N. S., Venne, J. L., Kaiser, A. P., & Peredo, T. N. (2026). Caregiver-Implemented Lower-intensity EMT en Español Para Autismo: A Single Case Design Study. Behavioral Sciences, 16(8).
Imaezue, G.C., Ajayi, D., & Davis, C. (2025). Treatment of aphasia in linguistically diverse populations: Current and future directions. Frontiers in Psychology, 16: 1612413.
Imaezue, G.C., Davis, C., Maram, K.V., Ajayi, D., & Goral, M. (2025). Recursive self-feedback enables target language production in aphasia with pathological language mixing. Brain and Language, 270: 105633.
Roberto, M. F., Soares, A. K. A., & Giacchini, V. (2025). Phonetic and phonological changes from a distinctive feature complexity approach: A case study. Journal CEFAC, 27(6), e1725.
Fawcett T.J., Longenecker R.J., Brunelle D.L., Berger J.I., Wallace M.N., Galazyuk A.V., Rosen M.J., Salvi R.J. and Walton J.P. (2022). Universal automated classification of the acoustic startle reflex using machine learning. Hearing Research, 428, 108667.
Recent Publications by Faculty
Dutta, M., Murray, L. L., Park, H., Burklow, E., Bose, A., Kim, H., Greenslade, K. J., Ramage, A. E., Combs, C., Balasubramanian, A., & Casilio, M. (2025). Discourse analysis in aphasia: A clinical tutorial (Dutta et al., 2025) (Version 1). ASHA Journals.
Imaezue, G. C., & Goral, M. (2025). Effect of Feedback Type and Self-Selected Practice Schedule on Speech Fluency During Aphasia Script Treatment. Journal of Communication Disorders, 117.
Goman, A. M., Tan, N., Pike, J. R., Bessen, S. Y., Chen, Z., Huang, A. R., Arnold, M. L., Burgard, S., Chisolm, T. H., Couper, D., Deal, J. A., Glynn, N. W., Gmelin, T., Gravens-Mueller, L., Hayden, K. M., Martinez-Amezcua, P., Mitchell, C. M., Pankow, J. S., Reed, N., S Sanchez, V., Schrack, J., Sullivan, K., Coresh, J., Lin, F. R., (2025). Effects of hearing intervention on falls in older adults: findings from a secondary analysis of the ACHIEVE randomized controlled trial. The Lancet Public Health, 10(6).
Gómez Franco, L. E., Badilla-Quintana, M. G., Walker, E., Restrepo, M. A., & Glenberg, A. M. (2025). Embodied activity enhances young children’s STEM comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. First Language, 0(0).
Masapollo, M., Gendron, R., Wyndham, E., Marcellus, A., Shamsi, A., & Maxfield, N. (2025). Interarticulator Timing Relations Underlie the Production of Precise and Consistent Vocal Tract Constrictions During Speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 1-21.
Pike, J. R., Huang, A. R., Reed, N. S., Arnold, M., Chisolm, T., Couper, D., ... & ACHIEVE Collaborative Research Group. (2025). Cognitive benefits of hearing intervention vary by risk of cognitive decline: A secondary analysis of the ACHIEVE trial. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 21(5), e70156.
Salloum, A., Morris, C., Walker, R., Gousie, R., & Agazzi, H. (2025). School-based bereavement interventions for children: A scoping review. School Mental Health.