Prof. Dr. Mabel L. Rice is the Fred & Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies at the University of Kansas. She directs the Merrill Advanced Studies Center, formerly the Child Language Doctoral Program and the NIDCD-funded Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences of Communication Disorders. She directs the Language Acquisition Studies Laboratory and was the PI on two longitudinal language acquisition studies funded by NIDCD. She was a member of the Scientific Leadership Group for the NIH Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study and a Co-PI on an NIH Small Business Tech Transfer grant with Richard Ellenson. She also directed a NIDCD-funded training grant across four funding cycles. She has been a Scholar-in-Residence at MIT, Harvard, the University of Potsdam, Germany, and Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and a Japan Fellow in Tokyo. Dr. Rice's research focuses on language acquisition and language impairments, morphosyntax (grammar markers of language impairment); genetics of language, reading, and speech impairments; language acquisition and impairments in twins; language impairments in children affected by HIV; and language impairments in children with autism.
Dr. Muhammad Hashim Raza is an Associate Professor at the Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of the Punjab, Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB). His research program focuses on investigating the genetic mechanisms involved in the causation of language disorders. The genetic pathways involved in language disorders are not well understood. Understanding these pathways will provide critical new insights for improved and early diagnosis and treatment of these common disorders. His research program aims to elucidate such genetic mechanisms through the study of well-characterized families with Specific Language Impairments (SLI).
