Year 2021 Round-up!

Year 2021-2022 was a great one. Below is a non-exhaustive recap of the lab’s activities, written by lab director Brie Stark!

First and foremost… we moved into our new building and lab space! We are now located in the IU Health Sciences Building, part of the new Regional Academic Health Center. We share a huge lab space with Drs. Tessa Bent and Raquel Anderson.

The lab welcomed two new PhD students (Ellie B, Katelyn U)! PhD student Julianne A. submitted her first paper (which she’s currently revising!). The lab welcomed four new MA students to the team (Taylor, Emma, Sydney, Reagan). Ellen G defended her Undergrad Honors Thesis in 2021, and I continued working with the awesome Grace O. (who has been a steadfast lab researcher since 2019) on her Undergrad Honors Thesis. I had the great pleasure of mentoring Darbi R and Melissa G on their MA Theses. The lab sponsored a summer Groups scholar (Sam S), sponsored a Cox scholar (Shelby S), and had an awesome team of 10+ undergraduate research volunteers. We welcomed our first Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Yanyu X, who took on a daunting longitudinal stroke MRI dataset in collaboration with The Florey Institute (and Dr. Amy Brodtmann’s lab). Stay tuned for fantastic data from that project.

The lab nabbed its first federal funding (from National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research), to evaluate inner speech in aphasia. Participate in the project by CLICKING HERE!

The lab scheduled our first in-person participant in 22 months, and we virtually tested 49 participants (over 99 sessions) thanks to my rock star team of Ashleigh D and Anne H and funding from the American Speech, Language Hearing Foundation New Investigator Award, and further funding for analysis provided by Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study Individual Research Award. Big shoutout to my fierce MA Research Assistants who transcribed & coded these 99+ samples (and others!) throughout this year (Taylor & Madison & Emily). A big thank you to the stakeholders and participants who give us their time and effort.

I was honored to be named a Distinguished Aphasia Scholar USA from The Tavistock Trust. A big thanks to Aphasia Access for featuring me in a recent podcast (LINK HERE).

I applied for an NIH K01 grant (thanks to my awesome mentor team of Drs. Melissa Duff, Lucy Dipper and Jana Iverson, and countless others) and received positive feedback, so looking forward to resubmitting in 2022. The lab also applied for an Indiana CTSI award – fingers crossed in 2022.

We somehow managed to put out eight publications, in large part because of continued collaboration with fantastic people from FOQUSAphasia and from my long-time collaborators at the University of South Carolina. The lab presented at 4 conferences, with students largely leading the way in abstract submissions (Julianne A taking the reins at ASHA; and then with Ashleigh and Anne at the Nordic Aphasia Conference). On the FOQUSAphasia side, we crowdfunded for an entirely new website (thank you donors!), gave a Brag & Steal presentation Aphasia Access, lead a Symposium at Academy Of Aphasia, and hosted 8 lectures / workshops (all free and archived on our website, www.foqusaphasia.com). We submitted abstracts to some new conferences this year, so looking forward to 2022.

I taught totally online, hybrid, and in person, and am grateful for fantastic undergrad, MA, and PhD students for humoring my poorly-executed Zoom humor, and for continuing to provide each other with grace. I was honored to be awarded the IU Trustees Teaching Award and the IU Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Award (from IU’s Center for Women and Technology) this past year.

I also had a fantastic time being on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of US Rowing for the past 1.5 years. What an inspiring and visionary group of people. Thank you for the opportunity.

I continued to be involved as an Alumni Mentor through Gates Cambridge Trust, an experience I’m very thankful for. I’m also loving my second year being a MARC Mentor through ASHA. I also reviewed for a few journals, and was lucky enough to review for several different funding organizations, including the NIH, NSF, and several Stroke Organizations from different countries.

The lab can’t do its fantastic work without these people, or the funding and support provided to us. Thank you.

Here’s to 2022.