Category: Research

Bethany Stearns, MS, RT(R)(MR)(CT), CHEP, is a clinical assistant professor in the Radiologic Science division and serves as a clinical coordinator. She has been a radiologic technologist for nearly 10 years. From the start of her teaching career, she became fascinated with how technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), is transforming radiologic science. Stearns...

Jean Jarrett is a fourth-year PhD student in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the UNC School of Medicine. She is a licensed speech-language pathologist and licensed behavior analyst with more than 10 years of clinical experience working primarily with individuals with autism.  Jarrett earned her bachelor’s degree...

Characterizing Sleep Outcomes in School-Age Children with Hearing Loss is a two-year grant, awarded December of 2025, funded by the American Speech-Language-Hearing (ASH) Foundation. This project investigates objective and subjective measures of sleep and fatigue in children with hearing loss who use hearing aids. The research is led by Julia Drouin, AuD, PhD, Director of the Auditory Language Learning (ALLears) Lab at UNC School of Medicine.  As a clinical audiologist,...

Katarina L. Haley (PhD, CCC-SLP) and Adam Jacks (Phd, CCC-SLP) recently participated in the Swallow your Pride podcast where they talked about navigating challenges of speech disorders after experiencing strokes. During the podcast Jacks and Haley share the emerging findings on new perceptual and acoustic measures shaping the future of...

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a rare, motor-based neurodevelopmental speech disorder with a genetic basis. Children with CAS know what they want to say, but have difficulty planning and coordinating the movements needed to speak, which results in speech breakdowns.  While much of the existing research has focused on young children, growing evidence shows that the effects of CAS often persist into adolescence and adulthood—highlighting the need...

Louise Thoma, PT, DPT, PhD, began her academic training at The Ohio State University, where she completed physical therapy school and earned her PhD, focusing on how people move using tools such as biomechanics. Specifically, she worked with individuals who suffered cartilage injuries in their knees.  Thoma continued her training...

Join Us for the 10th Annual Tar Heal Tuesday! UNC Health’s Giving Tuesday celebration returns—supporting life-saving research, world-class medical education, and compassionate care across UNC Health, the UNC School of Medicine, and affiliated departments and programs such as ours. Our department is proud to participate once again in the Tar Heal...

Spectrum, an autism research publication, recently featured Clare Harrop, an assistant professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences on conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic.