Lab Members
Graduate Students
Jamie Issacson, MA., CCC-SLP, Department of SLHS
Jamie is Ph.D. candidate in our laboratory. Jamie is a speech-language pathologist with over eight years of clinical experience. She is a Certified Brain Injury Specialist (CBIS) through the Brain Injury Association of America and worked for four years in inpatient rehabilitation, specializing in traumatic brain injury. She is interested in studying treatment techniques for individuals with language impairments, as well as studying the relationship between cognitive and language impairments.
Sara Mohr MSc, Department of SLHS
Sara Mohr is a Master’s student of Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Arizona. She received her BA in Neuroscience and French & Francophone Studies at Wartburg College. Currently, she works in Language and Neuroimaging Research Laboratory directed by Dr. Kielar. She is interested in pursuing a career in Speech-Language Pathology and working in a hospital setting.
Kerrah Rupel, SLPA, Department of SLHS
Kerrah Rupel recently completed the SLPA program with intention to become an SLP. Kerrah is working on language assessment with our participants and EEG.
Leah Rice MSc, Department of Linguistics and SLHS
Leah Rice is a doctoral candidate in the Linguistics department at the University of Arizona. She received her Bachelor of Science in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and currently works in Dr. Aneta Kielar’s Language and Neuroimaging laboratory as well as Dr. Thomas Bever’s Language and Cognition laboratory. Her research integrates formal syntactic theory with neurolinguistic models of sentence comprehension. Current studies employ behavioral and neuroimaging methods in healthy and stroke patient populations.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Honors Thesis
Mike Shen, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Mike is working on the fMRI study investigating neural correlated of phonological and semantic processing
Alexis Morrison, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Alexis graduated with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. She did her honors thesis in the lab on the relationship between narrative production and story gist in patients with stroke-related aphasia. The title of her thesis is: Relationship Between Story Gist and Narrative Production in Individuals with Stroke-Related Aphasia.
Kimberly Skvarla, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Kimmy completed her honors thesis in the lab. The thesis is titled: Electrophysiological Signature of Verb Argument Processing: ERP Priming Study
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Undergraduate Independent Study
Alyssa Belder, SLHS, SLPA program at UofA
Alyssa graduated with a B.S. in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She is now attending the SLPA program at the UofA. She would like to specialize in treating patients with neurological speech/language impairments. Joining the the lab has been a great experience for her!
Shene Dult, Biology
Shene is junior with a biology major (with a biomedical sciences emphasis). Her work in the lab focuses on analysis of language assessment in aphasia and EEG studies.
Dina Habassi, Physiology
Dina is a Physiology major with a minor in French. The main reason why she is interested in this lab is because she sees many stroke patients at her work as a scribe in the emergency department. By conducting research Dina developed a better understanding of stroke aphasia. She word on speech sample analysis.
Katie McConville, Neuroscience-Cognitive Science
Katie is pursuing a B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science with an emphasis in Cognition as well as a minor in Spanish with an intended graduation date of May 2020. She is interested in the role of language in human life, especially when language goes wrong as in aphasia and other disorders, which is what drew her to the lab.
Jaqueline Leyva, SLHS
Jaqueline is a current junior studying Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. After taking a neurobiology course with Dr. Kielar, she became extremely interested in the brain structure and how it works.
Hanna Nicole Johnson, Physiology
Hannah works in the lab on the TMS-fMRI study of phonological processing as well as speech analysis in aphasia.
Anita Lamoreaux, SLHS
Anita works on analysis of language assessment in aphasia.
Stephanie Lowe, Physiology
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Previous Lab Members
Kenna Lovelace, SLHS-Psychology
Kenna graduated with a B.S. in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She is now pursuing her MS in Speech-Language Pathology. She is interested in working in a medical setting with children and adults who have neurological disorders. Her experience in this lab has prepared her to administer neuropsychological assessments; skills that are necessary in her career. Her role in the lab focused on lesion mapping, EEG analysis, and admin duties.
Phoebe Lughes, SLHS
Phoebe graduated with a B.S. in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She is now pursing her MS in Speech-Language Pathology. Phoebe's role in the lab were the TMS-fMRI study of phonological processing as well as language assessment in aphasia.
Herman Singh Khalon, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Spencer Vaughan, Molecular and Cellular Biology
Ali Block, SLHS
Selenne Yescas, SLHS
Katelyn O'Niel Ingersoll, SLHS
Becky Cochiolo, SLHS
Rachel Thomason, SLHS
Tara M. Ellis-Vaughn B.S. Neuroscience and Cognitive Science | Molecular and Cellular Biology
Rachael Dinh, Public Health/Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Chelsea Privette SLHS Master's program.
Judy Piorkowski, SLHS
Julia Bak, SLHS, Special Education-Rehabilitation
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We are currently recruiting talented and passionate people to join the lab!
Graduate Students:
1. Laboratory Rotation
2. Master's thesis
3. Doctoral Dissertation
Undergraduate student positions:
We are accepting students who are:
- Interested in gaining research experience
- Would like to be trained on neuroimaging techniques
- Planning their Honors Thesis
- Interested in Independent study or directed research
If you are interested, please contact: akielar@email.arizona.edu