Tag: Justin Aronoff

Six new grants advance SHS research in health, hearing, language and literacy

Sept. 15, 2026 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The awards reflect a shared commitment to translating innovative research into meaningful clinical and developmental outcomes

Six SHS faculty members secured funding this summer. (Google Images)

Faculty in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science are launching newly funded projects that address how children hear in complex environments, how clinicians deliver swallowing rehabilitation, how early language and literacy interventions can be tailored to families and classrooms, and how educators can put statewide literacy policy into practice. These awards continue the department’s exceptional momentum in research funding, adding to a vibrant portfolio of active externally sponsored projects that advance scientific discovery and improve lives. Together, the awards reflect a shared commitment to translating innovative research into meaningful clinical and developmental outcomes.

Associate Professor Justin Aronoff is a co-investigator on “Functional Spatial Hearing in Reverberation by Pediatrically Implanted Children and Young Adults,” a project led by principal investigator Ellen Peng at Boys Town National Research Hospital. The award totals $3,353,690, with a $202,974 subaward coming to the University of Illinois.

The project focuses on children with severe-to-profound hearing loss who use bilateral cochlear implants. Although the devices partially restore spatial hearing, everyday settings such as noisy, reverberant classrooms can still make it difficult to locate sounds and separate a speaker’s voice from competing noise. Researchers will examine how room reverberation and cochlear implant signal processing work together to shape functional spatial hearing.

Using psychophysical methods and realistic simulations of reverberant spaces, the team will study auditory image perception, spatial acuity and spatial unmasking. It will also consider developmental and hearing-related factors that may influence performance. The findings are expected to clarify gaps between pediatric cochlear implant users and peers with typical hearing and inform future work on personalized bilateral fitting strategies.

Assistant Professor Mariana Mendes Bahia, Julia Carpenter and Kelly Rogers received a $9,994 Shirley Ryan AbilityLab Catalyst Grant for “Practice Patterns in Dysphagia Rehabilitation: From Characterization to Practice Improvement.” Dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, is common among people with neurological, oncological and other conditions, but research reports and clinical documentation often provide limited detail about what treatment is delivered and how it is implemented. Carpenter and Rogers are from the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, where Carpenter is a practice leader in SLP and Rogers is a swallowing clinician.

The team will use the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System, a framework for describing treatment targets, ingredients and mechanisms of action, to analyze dysphagia rehabilitation data. Researchers will characterize practice patterns across care settings and diagnoses, examine connections between rehabilitation practices and patient outcomes, and identify practical opportunities for quality improvement. By making treatment approaches more visible and comparable, the project aims to strengthen both clinical practice and future research.

A third project brings together Charles and Kay Stenberg Endowed Professor in Disability Research Pamela Hadley, the former SHS department head, Emily Harrington, assistant professor in Special Education and an SHS alumna, and Matt Lambert, professor and head of Special Education. Their two-year, $426,559 exploratory/developmental R21 award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supports “Leveraging Extant Data to Characterize Language Growth and Optimize Caregiver-Implemented Interventions for Children with Late Language Emergence.” The award runs from Aug. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2028.

Led by principal investigator Harrington, the researchers will analyze existing data from a randomized controlled trial of Enhanced Milieu Teaching-Sentence Focused, a caregiver-implemented intervention. They will trace vocabulary growth from 30 to 39 months and sentence development from 36 to 45 months, while examining how intervention strategies, children’s uptake of those strategies and participant-level factors shaped individual trajectories.

Results will help identify which intervention components work best at different developmental points. That evidence can guide the design and evaluation of brief, targeted approaches capable of reaching more children with late language emergence and their families.

SHS Associate Professor Laura Mattie’s collaborative research proposal with Founder Professor of Computer Science and Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering James Rehg, “Using Developmental Machine Learning to Code Eye Gaze in Down Syndrome and Fragile X Syndrome,” was selected for an 18-month, $29,987 grant from the Social & Behavioral Science Institute.

The project will determine AI’s ability to streamline behavioral coding of eye gaze in young children with Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome by leveraging the AnyGaze AI model. Recent advances in the development of AI models for quantifying nonverbal communication, led by Co-I Rehg, have enabled accurate coding of eye gaze in young neurotypical children and those with autism. However, the AnyGaze AI model has not yet been expanded to other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Additionally, the team will train the AnyGaze AI model to single, dual, and triadic gaze shifts, which are important for classifying early communication. With this foundation, the team aims to examine the potential clinical applications of the AnyGaze AI model by speech-language pathologists for assessment and treatment planning.

Assistant Professor Meaghan McKenna is principal investigator for “Writing for Reading: A Technology-Based Approach to Literacy Growth,” a $1,876,852 project funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs through its Stepping-Up Technology Implementation program. Hope Gerde of Texas A&M University is co-principal investigator; Jack Drobisz of the University of South Florida and Pasquale Bottalico are co-investigators. The award runs from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2031.

The team will add a kindergarten-first grade writing extension to the Electronic Data Management and Expert Decision Making System. Through iterative development, evaluation, scale-up and dissemination, the project will offer job-embedded professional development designed to help classroom teachers strengthen children’s writing and reading achievement.

McKenna also serves as co-principal investigator on “The Illinois Literacy Plan: Identifying the Supports Needed for Meaningful Policy Implementation and Revision,” led by principal investigator Rachel Schachter of the University of Illinois Chicago. The $15,000 grant from the University of Illinois System Institute of Government and Public Affairs runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.

The project will assess how school administrators, teachers and specialists perceive the Illinois State Literacy Plan and what support they need to implement it effectively. Findings will guide policies that better support educators and strengthen partnerships across the state.

Each project also depends on collaboration across disciplines and institutions, extending the faculty’s expertise through partnerships that connect laboratory measures, clinical records, classroom practice, public policy and family-centered intervention data with the practical challenges experienced by patients, practitioners, educators, children and caregivers every day.

Across the six awards, faculty and collaborators are pairing rigorous methods with questions rooted in daily life: hearing in a classroom, documenting swallowing care, supporting a child’s first words and sentences, strengthening early writing and reading, and helping educators implement literacy policy. These new projects continue a period of remarkable research growth within the department, adding to SHS’ mission of advancing both scientific discovery and clinical practice.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Illinois researcher earns NIH subaward to advance cochlear implant technology

Oct. 27, 2025 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

New grant advances cochlear implant noise reduction

Photo by caption

Justin Aronoff, an associate professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received a subaward on a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The project, led by Vortant Technologies, focuses on a novel approach called “spatially transparent binaural beamforming” that improves on noise reduction techniques in cochlear implant processors.

Cochlear implants have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, offering a sense of sound to individuals with severe to profound hearing loss. Yet despite their effectiveness, users often face significant challenges in noisy environments such as restaurants, classrooms or crowded public spaces. Traditional technologies designed to filter noise can unintentionally distort spatial cues—the subtle differences in sound loudness and timing that allow people to locate and separate sounds in space. This distortion makes it harder for cochlear implant users to orient themselves in noisy situations, diminishing the devices’ usefulness in the real world.

The newly funded collaboration between Aronoff’s research group at Illinois and Vortant Technologies aims to solve this problem by advancing a promising new strategy in signal processing. Beamforming, the core technology under study, works by amplifying sounds coming from a specific direction—typically the person a listener wants to focus on—while suppressing sounds from other directions. While beamforming is not new, most existing approaches compromise spatial awareness. Vortant’s innovation, however, is a “spatially transparent” beamformer, meaning it not only improves speech perception in noise but also preserves the spatial cues that are critical for natural hearing.

“Beamforming helps improve speech perception in noisy environments by allowing a microphone to focus on sound from a specific location,” Aronoff said. “The problem with most beamformers is that while they enhance speech, they distort spatial cues, making it difficult to tell where different sounds are coming from. Vortant has been developing a beamformer that overcomes this tradeoff, both improving speech perception and preserving spatial information.”

Aronoff’s lab will play a key role in testing this technology. As the Illinois subawardee, he is responsible for designing and conducting behavioral studies with cochlear implant users. These studies will assess whether the new algorithm delivers on its promise to improve speech understanding in noisy conditions while maintaining the ability to detect where sounds originate. All participant testing will take place in Aronoff’s laboratory at Illinois, where his team has extensive experience conducting similar research.

Being able to follow conversations in noisy environments is one of the biggest challenges they face, and we hope this technology can make a meaningful difference in their everyday lives.

Justin Aronoff

SHS Associate Professor

Vortant Technologies specializes in developing assistive technologies that increase accessibility for people with disabilities. Aronoff first connected with the company through Phil Schaefer, Vortant’s chief scientist, when the two served together on an NIH SBIR review panel. Their shared interest in advancing assistive hearing technologies led to discussions of collaboration, eventually resulting in this funded project. Alongside Aronoff’s group on the Urbana-Champaign campus, a second subaward was issued to Ryan Corey at the University of Illinois-Chicago, expanding the collaboration across campuses.

For Aronoff, the project builds on a long-standing line of research aimed at maximizing the benefits of binaural hearing—the use of both ears—in cochlear implant users. His laboratory has previously been supported by an NIH R01 grant from the NIDCD, now in its fifth year, which investigates how cochlear implant users process spatial hearing cues. That project has already generated four peer-reviewed articles, additional manuscripts under review, and presentations at major national and international conferences. A renewal application for the R01 is currently under consideration, demonstrating the momentum and sustained impact of his research program.

The new SBIR project represents an opportunity to translate fundamental scientific findings into real-world applications. By validating the effectiveness of Vortant’s beamforming algorithm in a controlled laboratory setting, Aronoff’s group will help lay the groundwork for technology that could ultimately be integrated into commercial cochlear implant processors. If successful, the innovation has the potential to make daily listening situations—such as following conversations in a busy café or hearing a teacher in a lively classroom—more manageable and less exhausting for cochlear implant users.

For Aronoff, the potential impact is deeply motivating. “Our ultimate aim is to improve speech perception in noise for cochlear implant users,” he said. “Being able to follow conversations in noisy environments is one of the biggest challenges they face, and we hope this technology can make a meaningful difference in their everyday lives.”

The NIH’s SBIR program is specifically designed to support early-stage research and development conducted by small businesses, often in collaboration with academic partners. By fostering these partnerships, the program seeks to accelerate the translation of innovative ideas into marketable products that can benefit patients and society. The Phase I award to Vortant Technologies and its collaborators at Illinois and UIC exemplifies this mission, advancing cutting-edge science with clear pathways toward clinical application.

As the project progresses, Aronoff and his team will collect data to determine whether the algorithm meets its dual goals of enhancing speech perception and preserving spatial hearing. If the Phase I studies are successful, the team hopes to pursue a Phase II SBIR award, which would provide more substantial funding to refine the technology and move closer to commercialization.

For cochlear implant users, the promise of better hearing in noise could be life-changing. For Aronoff and his collaborators, the new grant marks an important step toward bridging the gap between laboratory research and the lived experiences of people who rely on hearing technology.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Aronoff’s R01 grant aimed at maximizing binaural benefits

July 19, 2021 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Justin Aronoff’s study will provide insight into how the binaural auditory system combines signals from the two ears. (Photo provided)

Bilateral cochlear implants are used to provide hearing to both ears for deaf children and adults, as well as provide binaural hearing. But the benefits of bilateral implants can be hampered by poor integration of the devices’ left and right inputs. Thanks to an R01 grant, Department of Speech and Hearing Science associate professor Justin Aronoff has a plan to combat that.

Aronoff was awarded a $1.57 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for his project “The contributions of interaurally correlated signals and interaurally symmetric place of stimulation for the binaural auditory system.” The proposed study will provide insight into how the binaural auditory system combines signals from the two ears and lay the groundwork for a shift in how and when clinicians program bilateral cochlear implant users’ devices to maximize binaural benefits.

Aronoff has just begun data collection, and recently gave a demonstration of some of the study’s testing, with research assistant Simin “Tina” Soleimanifar as the subject.

In Aronoff’s lab, Tina, who does not have a cochlear implant, sat next to a scope where she can see the signal that is coming out of a cochlear implant.

“The first thing that we need to do when we’re testing a cochlear implant patient is the same thing that you would do if you go into the (audiology) clinic,” Aronoff said. “And that’s basically setting what are the comfort and safety levels.”

As Aronoff explains, the simulations of cochlear implants are not really simulations of what it would sound like to cochlear implant users. “Most of them are just simulations of what it would sound like to only have 22 notes on your piano,” he said, “but everything has to be done on those 22 notes. That’s all you can hear. … (Renowned researcher) David Landsberger (said) listening with the cochlear implant is like playing the piano with a ping pong paddle.’ That you’re hitting a bunch of notes at once. And so if I turn off an electrode, that paddle gets a little wider for all the other notes. That’s the way to think about it.”

For Aronoff, the potential impact is deeply motivating. “Our ultimate aim is to improve speech perception in noise for cochlear implant users,” he said. “Being able to follow conversations in noisy environments is one of the biggest challenges they face, and we hope this technology can make a meaningful difference in their everyday lives.”

To understand what the signal from the cochlear implant actually is, you need to use a scope. Aronoff said the scope is connected to breakout boards, which allow him to tap the output from each electrode and put it on a scope and record it, to make sure the signal is what he thinks it is. Different devices have a different number of electrodes, Aronoff said. He was working with a cochlear device during this test run, which has 22 electrodes. During the test, he gradually increases the amount of stimulation until Tina can see something on the scope.

Aronoff compared the electrodes to shining a flashlight beam.

“As you walk away from a wall that you’re shining a flashlight beam on, the beam gets wider and wider. And these are fairly far away from the wall. What that means is if you have two flashlight beams right next to each other, they illuminate mostly the same spot on the wall. There’s a little difference on the edges, but they’re mostly overlapping. And that’s what’s happening as well with these electrodes. And so that’s why when you go from one electrode to the next, you’re stimulating most of the same neurons.”

One of the most important issues Aronoff hopes to tackle with this grant is about perception of interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs), which limit the ability of bilateral cochlear implant users to localize sounds and understand speech in noisy environments.

“This is actually a big question of the grant,” he said. “We know for a pitch that it is very malleable. That over time whatever I tell you in your map, whichever electrodes get the same frequencies in the outside world will start sounding the same in terms of pitch. We don’t know if that’s true for ITDs and ILDs. That if the best electrodes paired together change over time or not. It definitely seems to be less malleable. We don’t know if it’s malleable at all. And that’s a big purpose of this grant, to see if that correlated input only affects the pitch that you hear, or if it’s affecting the entire auditory system.”

Another issue is that people who have two cochlear implants don’t always hear one coherent sound from the two ears. They will sometimes hear a left ear sound and a right ear sound, Aronoff said.

“If you’re listening over headphones and one of them is bad, the way to tell is you lift one up. You can’t be like, ‘Oh, I can hear it’s the left one that’s bad. You have to lift one up.’ That’s how well things fuse together into one perception. Now, for cochlear implant users, that’s often not the case. They often do not have things fusing together completely. And so that’s one thing that we look at. There’s big benefits to it.”

The benefit of having bilateral cochlear implants is more than just having a backup if one implant goes out, Aronoff said. They will allow you to hear better in noisy environments.

“If you’re listening to someone who’s across the table from you and there’s background noise, being able to spatially separate out where are the speakers from everyone else helps you. And having two ears gives you that ability. If you only have one ear, you cannot tell something’s coming from the left or the right. So two ears is really what you need. And most cochlear implant users can localize reasonably well. Not as good as normal hearing listeners, but reasonably well. So that’s a big benefit of having two ears as well. There’s other things in terms of when someone comes up on one side of you. If it’s on the side that doesn’t have a cochlear implant, you might not even know they’re talking to you. There’s a lot of benefits of having two instead of one.

Getting a good measure of fusion has been one of the more challenging aspects of the project, Aronoff said, since fusion is a central idea to the grant, and because everyone has a different idea of what fusion means.

“A lot of the other things are largely predicated on this idea that you hear it as a coherent sound,” he said. “You can’t localize a sound if it sounds like it’s coming from both ears. And so, yeah, fusion is very central to this grant. And so we have a lot of experiments where we are looking at that fusion and how different things affect it. “

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu. 

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