NKI annual holiday lunch, 2008

Members

John J. Sidtis, PhD, is a Research Professor of Psychiatry in the New York University School of Medicine and the Director of the Brain and Behavior Laboratory at the Nathan Kline Institute. He received advanced degrees from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and Stony Brook University. He was a founding member of the first program in cognitive neuroscience at Cornell Medical School and Rockefeller University has been studying brain-behavior relationships with functional imaging for 25 years. He is a member of the Motor Function, Speech and Rehabilitation Study Section in the Center for Scientific Research at the NIH.

Diana Sidtis, Ph.D, CCC/SLP is a Professor in the Department of Speech Language Pathology at New York University and a Research Scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in New York, where she is Associate Director of the Brain and Behavior Laboratory. She earned advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Brown University, and was awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Communication Disorders at Northwestern University and earned Clinical Certification from California State University. She has received funding from federal and local agencies to perform neurolinguistic and speech science research and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at New York University

Violette Godier, B.S., is the Laboratory Manager and Research Support Assistant in the Brain and Behavior Laboratory. She earned a Bachelors of Science in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology from New York University in New York, NY in 2008. Violette’s research interests include neurodegenerative disorders and acquired neurogenic communication disorders. She will be entering the MA program in Communication Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in Fall, 2009.

Tiffany Rogers is a student in Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University, and a research assistant in the Brain and Behavior Laboratory at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. She performs an array of tasks including acoustic analysis, transcriptions, editing, and data management. She developed an honors project in her senior year studying pause-fillers in Parkinsonian speech, and is entering the Doctoral Program in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University in the fall.

Shirley Dagan is currently a Speech-language Pathology Master's student at New York University (NYU). She had previously received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in Communication Studies with an emphasis in interpersonal communication. Additionally, she is part of a team of researchers in the Brain and Behavior Laboratory at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, where she participates as a research assistant for an ongoing Parkinson's project, by taking part in tasks such as acoustic analysis.

Dora Katsnelson, MA, is a member of the Brain and Behavior Laboratory at the Nathan Kline Institute. After earn her Bachelor’s Degree from New York University, she graduated from the Speech Pathology Program at Teacher’s College of Columbia University, New York and is now completing her Clinical Fellowship Year at The New Children’s School PS 23 in the Bronx NY. Her Masters honors project examined voice characteristics following deep brain stimulation as treatment in Parkinson’s disease.

Seung-yun (Theresa) Yang is a doctoral student in the department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at New York University. She earned her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in Linguistics at Korea University, Seoul, Korea and completed her master’s degree in Communication Disorders at the University of Connecticut. She is studying the intonational features of pragmatic utterances for her doctoral project.

Ji Sook Ahn is a doctoral student in the department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at New York University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English Linguistics and Literature and master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea. She is studying pausing in Parkinson’s speech, comparing the effects of “off” and “on” deep brain stimulation, for her doctoral project.

Kelly Bridges is a doctoral student in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University. She received her master's degree from Florida Atlantic University in 2008 in experimental psychology, and more specifically, child language development. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Loyola College in Maryland in 2006. Kelly is interested in studying adult disordered speech in populations with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. In the lab, among other tasks, she assists with quantification of brain scanning data.

Krista Cameron, B.A., is currently a student in the MA Speech and Language Pathology program at NYU. She previously earned her degree from the University at Albany (SUNY) in English Literature. She is interested in Speech Therapy and Autism in children.

Maria Anderson is currently a Speech-language Pathology Master's student at New York University (NYU). She had previously received her undergraduate degree at the New York University, majoring in Speech-Language Pathology.

Tarun Calidas is studying Electrical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. He’s finishing his junior with communication theory and networks as his main field of interest. He works in the Brain and Behavior Lab at NKI one day a week doing rate and acoustic analysis, more recently learning about image processing. He hopes one-day to enter the Biomedical/Electrical Engineering field.

Hae Su Kang is a Masters Student in the Department of Communicative Science and Disorders at NYU. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees in Korean Linguistics at Yonsei University. His goal is to study how brain damage affects speech and language processing by combining linguistic theory with analysis of brain regions, with the purpose of effective diagnosis and treatment.

Rachel Wolf, Ph.D., CCC/SLP recently completed her Ph.D. in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University. She is working as a Research Associate on the Parkinson DBS project. She is performing research on pragmatic repetition in normal and disordered verbal discourse and is currently an adjunct member of the NYU teaching faculty in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. She is entering employment as a Research Scientist in the Brain and Behavior Lab and at Mt Sinai Hospital.