Indiana University Bloomington

Research at IU Bloomington, IU School of Medicine given $3 million boost

In 1979, Chancellor's Professor David Pisoni brought the first two postdoctoral researchers to Indiana University's campus when he was awarded a five-year training grant by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders. Today, the same grant supports six postdoctoral researchers, six doctoral students and six medical students in Bloomington and Indianapolis.

The grant, now funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), has received additional funding to continue through 2014--making it the longest existing training grant in NIDCD history. During the next six years, the NIDCD will provide more than $3 million for training in research concerning the use of sensory aids, such as cochlear implants and hearing aids.

"This grant is unique because it links basic science with clinical work in both Bloomington and Indianapolis, at Riley Hospital and the IU School of Medicine," Pisoni said. "Significant efforts have been made to link departments and programs here with the medical school, and this strengthens life sciences on both campuses."

The multidisciplinary research focuses on training in speech, hearing and sensory communication and brings together a broad spectrum of life sciences, including Ph.D. and M.D. researchers. At IU Bloomington, the training includes the departments of psychological and brain sciences, linguistics and speech and hearing sciences and incorporates the Program in Neuroscience and the Cognitive Science Program. It is also the only training grant that now combines research in Bloomington with that of the IU School of Medicine.

Overall, the program's objective is to provide highly specialized research training from the perspective of neuroscientists who study the structure and function of the hearing mechanism, to that of psycholinguists, speech scientists and cognitive neuroscientists, who are interested in the functional properties of the linguistic message. Trainees leave the program with in-depth competence in various biomedical, psychological and linguistics areas. Their research gives them access to the recently upgraded Imaging Research Facility in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences as well as the Center for Neuroimaging in Radiology at the School of Medicine, which is used for both basic and clinical research.

Several pre- and postdoctoral students working under the grant both in Indianapolis and in Pisoni's Speech Research Laboratory in Bloomington have gone on to successful research careers at IU and elsewhere. Here in Bloomington, Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences Judith Gierut, who worked on the training grant as a postdoctoral researcher from 1985-87, said that this work was the best decision she made to advance her career.

"I was exposed to a lot of different literature that has served me very well today, in terms of placing my ideas from a very focused dissertation back into the bigger picture," she said.

Today, Gierut's lab focuses on pre-school children who have phonological disorders, looking at the psycholinguistic properties of language that might influence their learning. She runs her lab similar to how she remembers Pisoni running the lab where she worked.

"(Pisoni) runs a lab that can only help promote all of the individuals that are working in that lab," Gierut said. "The training grant also brings in all kinds of speakers that we were able to interact with one-on-one. For some people just getting out of school to have that opportunity to get to know people on the cutting edge of their fields was very important in terms of networking and placing one's own research in a larger context."

Not only has the training grant helped researchers connect to these professionals, but it also has created a network of individuals who have worked under the grant in the past 30 years. Tessa Bent, assistant professor of speech and hearing sciences at IU Bloomington, learned about the program from her advisor at Northwestern University, Ann Bradlow. Bradlow was a postdoctoral trainee in the Speech Research Laboratory from 1993-96 and is now a professor of linguistics at Northwestern. She helped Bent join the ranks of successful faculty who kicked off their careers with the NIDCD training grant.

"(The training) helped me to make connections in different areas, which ultimately helped me get a job," Bent said. "I loved collaborating with postdocs from different backgrounds, and it was nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of and give practice talks to."

Bent, like many others, had the chance to work on writing her own grant during her training. She recently was awarded an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus grant from the NIH for her research into how children perceive different varieties of foreign-accented English.

Rachael Holt, who is in her fifth year as an assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, worked as a postdoctoral researcher under the grant from 2003-05. The grant helped her secure funding for her own project developing materials used to test perception in children who have cochlear implants.

"Training grants like this one allow people to do research in areas they're interested in, rather than doing specific work that is tied to a research grant," she said. "As a postdoc you can come in and work on anything you're interested in, not just do the work proposed."

The training grant, Holt said, gives postdoctoral researchers the chance to work on projects related to what they may have done as doctoral students and take their knowledge in a new direction. Holt also attributes the long-term success of the grant to the vision of the faculty involved and their dedication to new research ideas and interest in the people involved.

"Dr. Pisoni is a driving force behind this grant," she said. "Even now, he checks in with me to talk about ideas for research. He wants people to succeed at every level, and that's one reason this grant is so successful."

Program faculty in Bloomington include:

  • Pisoni (Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science, Adjunct Professor of Linquistics, Adjunct Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, IU School of Medicine)
  • James C. Craig (Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences)
  • Daniel A. Dinnsen (Chancellor's Professor of Linguistics, Professor of Cognitive Science and Adjunct Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences)
  • Gierut (Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Cognitive Science and Adjunct Professor of Linquistics)
  • Larry E. Humes (Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, IU School of Medicine)
  • Dale Sengelaub (Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Neuroscience and Biology)

Program faculty at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis include:

For more information about Pisoni's Speech Research Laboratory, visit www.indiana.edu/~srlweb.

Media contact: Jenny Porter, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences; (812) 855-8897