Sara Mamo, Principal Investigator
Sara K. Mamo completed her audiology and research degrees at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and she did a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health. She joined the Department of Communication Disorders at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in January 2017. She teaches aural rehabilitation for the undergraduates, electrophysiology for the audiology graduate students, and is developing a new course focused on Public Health Audiology. Her research focuses on improving the accessibility and affordability of hearing healthcare for older adults. She has a particular interest in addressing the hearing care needs of individuals with hearing loss and dementia. Her basic research focuses on how speech perception is impacted by the combination of hearing loss and cognitive decline and how best to address those speech perception needs in group care settings. She is also affiliated with the Meyers Primary Care Institute, which is a joint endeavor of the UMass Medical School, Reliant Medical Group, and Fallon Health.
Rudy Lucier, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Rudy is a senior SLHS major interested in becoming a speech therapist. In his free time, he enjoys biking, practicing piano, and playing basketball. He is a research assistant in the Healthy Hearing Lab, and focuses on setting up testing materials for bilingual participants. His particular interests in the field include bilingual language development, gestalt language processing, and the anatomy of speech structures.
Jokaira Diaz, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jokaira is a senior Speech Language and Hearing Sciences major. She works as an undergraduate research assistant for the Healthy Hearing Lab and is particularly interested in working with Spanish speaking bilingual children and adults. Jokaira plans to attend graduate school to become a speech language pathologist and work with underrepresented bilingual communities.
Emily LaSpada, PhD Graduate Research Assistant
Emily LaSpada is an AuD, PhD graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Connecticut where her interest in research was piqued. Emily’s passion for working with individuals that are D/deaf and Hard of Hearing stems from fluency in ASL and a history working with the American School for the Deaf. Her developing work will focus on D/deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals’ experiences developing identity and navitating self advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, spending time with family, friends, dog Goose, and cat Jango.
Healthy Hearing Lab Alumni
Sarah Yoon
Former Undergraduate Research Assistant
B.S. Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, Class of 2024
Frenchelee Torres
Former Undergraduate Research Assistant
B.S., Communication Sciences and Disorders, Class of 2023
Liv Rinaldi
Former Research Fellow and Laboratory Manager
MPH, Class of 2024
Alissya Silva
Former Undergraduate Research Assistant
B.S. Communication Sciences and Disorders, Class of 2021
Katherine Garrity
Former Graduate Research Assistant
Au.D., Class of 2024
Kara Wheeler
Former Graduate Research Assistant
Au.D., Class of 2022
Julia Sierra
Former Undergraduate Research Assistant
Julia Read
Former Research Assistant
MA-SLP Class of 2021
Frank Sigismondo
Former Research Assistant
B.S., Communication Sciences and Disorders, Class of 2020