ACCOLADES & ACHIEVEMENTS

We're proud to celebrate the milestones and recognitions that highlight the impact of our work. From research awards to community acknowledgments, this page showcases the accomplishments that continue to inspire and motivate us.

Dr. Karla N. Washington

We are excited to announce that Dr. Karla N. Washington has been awarded a

National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 Grant

This highly competitive grant, funded at over $2 million USD for the period 2025–2030, supports Dr. Washington’s project:

Characterizing accuracy and variability in speech sound productions across bidialectal and bilingual preschoolers.

Her research addresses the challenges of diagnosing speech sound disorders in children who are bidialectal or bilingual, including speakers of African American English/Standard American English and Jamaican Creole/Jamaican English. By combining transcription-based accuracy measures with acoustic analyses, this work will help distinguish typical from disordered development.

Ruochen Ning

We are excited to announce that Ruochen Ning’s paper has just been accepted for publication in Systematic Reviews

Paper Title:
Neuroimaging in pediatric language development and disorders: a scoping review protocol

This work represents an important contribution to the field, providing a structured approach to reviewing neuroimaging research in pediatric language development and disorders.

The PedLLS Lab

The PedLLS Lab is pleased to announce that our

NIH R01 Grant (R01DC023053): Characterizing accuracy and variability across bidialectal and bilingual preschoolers has been funded by the NIDCD

This grant has been funded for the period 2025–2030. Bidialectal and bilingual children are routinely misdiagnosed for speech sound disorder, with under-diagnosis having lifelong negative impacts on academic and career achievement and over-diagnosis placing children at risk for social stigma and unnecessary costs to school systems. By targeting under-studied language combinations (African American English–Standardized American English bidialectals; Jamaican Creole–Jamaican English bilinguals), this research will broaden the theoretical and empirical knowledge base guiding clinical management of speech development and disorders. Using both transcription-based measures of accuracy and spectral acoustic-based measures of variability, the project will compare typical development across bidialectal and bilingual speakers and identify the factors that best distinguish typical from disordered speech development in these populations.

Nicole Bazzocchi

We are excited to announce that Nicole Bazzocchi has been

awarded the

Drs. Walter Colston (Pete) Howell & Helene J. Polatajko-Howell Student Conference Presentation Fund

This fund is intended to defray travel costs for students who are presenting their work at a peer-reviewed national or international conference, and are requesting financial assistance to do so. This award provided some support for Nicole to present her work at the ICPLA conference in Patra, Greece this past June.

Dr. Karla N. Washington

We are excited to announce that Dr. Karla N Washington has been named

Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Monolingual and Multilingual Paediatric Speech-Language Pathology

Speech sound disorder (SSD) and developmental language disorder (DLD) present significant barriers to academic and social participation, with the potential to negatively impact speech and language development of children globally. Dr. Washington's overarching research goal is to support children's human right to effective communication by improving diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. Her research addresses misdiagnosis of SSD and DLD in multilingual preschoolers in an understudied context (Jamaica Creole-English) through diversification of theoretical and empirical approaches. She also aims to characterize the neural basis of DLD, with the goal of better understanding memory-language mechanisms underlying grammar learning and impairment.

Ruochen Ning

We are excited to announce that Ruochen Ning has been selected for the

University of Toronto’s Teaching in Higher Education (THE500)

In THE500, senior PhD candidates and post-doctoral fellows improve their teaching practice by becoming more knowledgeable about how students learn and about different teaching theories and styles. Participants take part in a variety of teaching situations, from small group work to formal lecture sessions, with ample opportunities to reflect on their own teaching and learning experiences. Admission to THE500 is competitive, recognizing Ruochen’s commitment to teaching excellence and professional development in higher education.

Katarina Miletic

We are excited to announce that Katarina Miletic has been

awarded the

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) (July 2024)

and the

Harmonize for Speech Graduate Scholarship

(September 2024)

The Ontario Graduate Scholarship is a merit-based award that supports graduate students who demonstrate academic excellence and strong research potential. The Harmonize for Speech Graduate Scholarship supports students pursuing research and training in the field of speech and language sciences.

These awards recognize Katarina’s outstanding academic achievements and her dedication to advancing research in our field.

Koubra Hassan Haggar

We are excited to announce that Koubra Hassan Haggar has been awarded the

King Charles III Coronation Medal

This award is presented to an individual who has made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region of, or community in Canada. In this case, the recognition highlights Koubra's advocacy work with Black and Francophone communities in Ontario.

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Amy Wilson

We are excited to announce that Amy Wilson has been awarded the

Susan J. Wagner Award for Student Leadership in Interprofessional Education

This award honours a student at the University of Toronto who demonstrates leadership, dedication and excellence through promotion and engagement of interprofessional education and care.

Elaina Van Abbema

Congratulations to Elaina on her undergraduate thesis, exploring the effect of foreign accent and humour, presented at the

19th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology !

Renee Boney

We are proud to shoutout Renee for publishing an article in

ARIEAL (Advanced Research in Experimental & Applied Linguistics) Research Magazine.

The article focused on how speech-language pathologists can use the R programming language to assist in developing patient plans and monitoring patient progress!