KU News Release

LAWRENCE — A doctoral student in developmental speech physiology and neuroscience at the University of Kansas has received a prestigious $10,000 scholarship from the American Speech Language Hearing Association Foundation.

Emily Zimmerman, of Denver, Colo., is one of only six doctoral students nationally to receive the 2009 New Century Scholars Doctoral Scholarship, which honors exemplary doctoral candidates who are committed to completing a research doctoral degree and pursuing an academic career in communication sciences and disorders in the United States.

Zimmerman’s doctoral dissertation research is evaluating the effectiveness of a possible new medical device called the Vestibu-Glider in assessing and improving respiratory development in young infants. The device is being engineered and developed at KU in the Communication Neuroscience Laboratories directed by Zimmerman’s doctoral adviser, Steven Barlow, for use in neonatal intensive care units. Zimmerman will study how gentle linear stimulation via a gliding motion can accelerate infants’ breathing patterns.

Barlow, professor of speech-language-hearing, and his laboratory previously developed the NTrainer, a therapeutic instrumented pacifier patented by KU and now marketed by KC BioMediX of Shawnee.

Zimmerman earned a bachelor’s degree in speech-language-hearing in 2005 and a master’s degree in speech pathology in 2007, both from KU. She is the daughter of Rand and Cynthia Zimmerman of Denver, Colo.

Earlier this year, Zimmerman was one of three of Barlow’s students who received awards from the Journal of Neonatal Nursing for having written a top-10 cited paper from 2006 to 2008. She also has received a $1,500 Friends of the Life Span Institute Graduate Research Award to support her dissertation project. Funding for Barlow’s research comes from the National Institutes of Health.