Led by Dr. Jun Wang, Associate Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Moody College of Communication and in the Department of Neurology, Dell Medical School,  the Speech Disorders & Technology Lab (SDTL) focuses on basic science studies on healthy and disordered speech motor control as well as developing assistive speech technologies including silent speech interface (SSI) and speech brain-computer interface (BCI). Advanced computing techniques (e.g., machine learning) are heavily used in these projects. The lab is located at CMB1 in Moody College and HDB5 in Dell Medical School.

What's New?

• Emily received the Sara Haynes Scholarship (approximately $1,000) from the Texas Speech-Language Hearing Foundation (TSHF).  Congratulations!
• Aditya presented his poster on Spanish /r/ vs /rr/ classification at the CNS Technology & Science Undergraduate Research Forum 2025, April 11 (Friday).  Congratulations!
• Keerthi and Daniela presented their posters at UT CARE Research Day 2025, where Keerthi received the Best Poster Award in Session A. Congratulations!
• Moody College Center for Advancing Teaching Excellence AI across Moody series features Dr. Wang's signature course Communication and AI in Spring 2025.
• Kristin won the 2025 Student Excellence in Research Award from the journal  Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedia (aka Best Student Article Award among these published in the journal in the past three years).  Congratulations!
• Keerthi, Anusha, Kristin, Emily, Jinuk, and Dorcas have three poster presentations accepted by TSHA 2025, May 1-3, San Antonio, TX.
• Garvit graduated with a Master's degree in Computer Science. Congratulations!
• Dr. Wang serves as a co-I on the NIH R56 grant (PI: Lester-Smith) on vocal tremor.
• Jinuk received a Postdoctoral Fellowship award from the National Research Foundation of Korea. Congratulations!
• Kristin, Mimi, Daniela, Maxine, Zoe,  Zhe-Chen, and Beiming have three posters accepted by ASHA 2024.  Maxine and Daniela's poster was selected as a Visionary Session. Congratulations!
• Dave has two papers accepted by Frontiers in Psychology and JSLHR, respectively; Jinuk has a paper on neural-to-speech synthesis accepted by Interspeech 2024. Congratulations!
• Moody news website features Emily's story as a student mom. Emily is admitted by the UT SLHS graduate program.  Congratulations!
• Emily presented her poster on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the UT Longhorn Poster Session on April 10, 2024. Congratulations!
• Emily and Zoe are admitted by the UT SLHS Graduate program.  Congratulations!
• Daniela received a UT CARE Undergraduate Research Fellowship ($5,000). Congratulations!
• Jinuk presented his poster on neural speech synthesis at the UT CARE Research Day 2024!
• Nayanika orally presented her recent work on alaryngeal speech at the Motor Speech Conference, San Diego, CA, Feb 2024.
• Beiming successfully defended his dissertation in Nov, 2023 and then became an Applied Scientist at Amazon, Inc. Congratulations, Dr. Cao!
• Kristin has successfully defended her dissertation in July 2023.  Congratulations, Dr. Teplansky!
• Kristin received the 2023 Charles H. Ferguson Endowed Fellowship in Speech-Language Pathology from the Dept. of SLHS, UT Austin.  Congratulations!
• Sidh's poster on silent vowel classification was honorably mentioned for the best poster award at the Longhorn Research Poster Session 2023 as part of the UT Undergraduate Research Week. Ilanah and Beiming are student co-authors. Congratulations!
• Moody College news website features the brain-computer interface project in the lab.
• Dell Medical School website features the neural speech decoding project in the lab: This Is Your Brain on Sound (by Hannah Jane D. Collins).
• Dr. Wang takes the three-year term (2023-2025) to serve as an editor in the speech section of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR).
• Beiming and Kristin have two papers accepted by Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, respectively. Congratulations!
• Beiming has three papers accepted by Interspeech 2022, Incheon, South Korea, and Sensors, respectively.  Congratulations!
• Natalie graduated this May and joined our MS SLHS program in Fall 2022.  Congratulations!
• Brian graduated this May and join Amazon as a Software Development Engineer in Summer 2022.  Congratulations!
• Beiming did summer intern on speech research at Samsung Research America 2022. Congratulations!
• Dr. Wang gave an invited presentation at the Holloway Submit by the Association of Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD), Miami, FL, May 18-20, 2022.
• Anusha has a paper on voice onset time for ALS accepted by the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Congratulations!
• Beiming and Kristin will present at the UT CARE Research Day, April 22, 2022.  Welcome to stop by.
• Kristin presented our progress in the OPM-MEG project at Sandia Day on campus, March 31, 2022.
• Kristin received a UT Graduate School Continuing Fellowship for FY 22-23 ($46,000) and a Summer Fellowship for 2022. Congratulations!
• Four abstracts by Beiming, Cissy, Garret, Kristin, Natalie, and Shravan respectively have been accepted by the 2022 Conference on Motor Speech and the Signal Analytics on Motor Speech Workshop,  Feb 16 - 20, Charleston, SC. Congratulations!
• Dr. Wang received a LDRD grant (PI: Borna) and a SAA grant from Sandia National Labs to support the neural speech decoding (speech brain-computer interface) project.
• Debadatta successfully defended his dissertation on neural speech decoding. He will join NINDS, NIH as a postdoctoral research fellow early 2022. Congratulations, Dr. Dash!
• Lab alumnus Dr. Alan Wisler received a prestigious ASHFoundation New Century Scholar Research Grant. Congratulations!
• Dr. Wang received a supplemental grant on his current R01 from NIH (2021-2025) to support the silent speech interface project.
• Alan and Kristin have two presentations accepted by ASHA2021, November 18 - 20, Washington, DC. Congratulations!
• Debadatta has two papers on nerual speech decoding accepted by the proceedings of EMBC2021 and SPECOM2021, respectively, and will also present at the Society of the Neurobiology of Language Meeting in October 2021.  Congratulations!
• Kristin was awarded the Lee and Joe Jamail Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Speech-Language Pathology ($3000).  Congratulations!
• Dr. Wisler joined the Department of Math and Statistics at the Utah State University, Logan, UT as a tenure-track Assistant Professor this Fall 2021.  Congratulations!
• Beiming has a paper on speech reconstruction for laryngectomees accepted by Interspeech 2021, Brno, Czeck. Congratulations!
• Beiming, Debadatta, and Kristin presented their posters (virtually) at the UT CARE Reseach Day 2021. Congratulations!
• Debadatta received a Student Travel Award from the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Society to attend the BCI Meeting 2021. Congratulations!
• Anusha, Kristin, and Alan have a presentation accepted by TSHA 2021. Debadatta has a paper accepted by NER2021. Congratulations!
• The lab is featured in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Society Newsletter, issue 1, December 2020.
• Debadatta received an ISCA Travel Grant to attend Interspeech 2020 and started his Fall 2020 internship at Facebook Reality Labs. Congratulations!
• Alan and Kristin presented three posters at the Signal Analytics Workshop at the Motor Speech Conference, 2020. Debadatta presented orally at the Texas MEG Symposium 2020 in March and published three papers in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Sensors, and IEEE Access. Alan and Dave first-authored two papers that were accepted by the 33rd International FLAIRS conference (FLAIRS33), 2020, and the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) as part of the World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI), 2020, respectively.  Dave, Kristin, Alan, Beiming, and Wendy co-authored three papers that were accepted by Interspeech 2020. Alan has a paper accepted by the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Congratulations!
• Kristin's poster is recognized as a Meritorious Poster (about 3% selected) by ASHA 2019.  Congratulations!
• Dr. Wang recevied a NIH R01 award to support the silent speech interface project ($2.9M, 2019-2024).
• The Lab moved to UT Austin in Fall 2019.
• Dr. Wang received a subtract of a NIH R01 grant on developmental language disorders (PI: Goffman, $2.2M, 2017-2022).
• Debadatta received a Best Student Paper Award from Brain Informatics 2018. Congratulations!
• Mathworks (MATLAB) User Story features the neural speech decoding for brain-computer interface project in the lab.
• A Nature Outlook article features the early detection of ALS from speech signals project in the lab.