Author: Karen S. Helfer

Dr. Karen S. Helfer is Professor and Chair of the Communication Disorders department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in Hearing Science from Northwestern University. Her research program (which is funded by NIDCD) focuses on identifying age-related changes in speech understanding. Dr. Edward L. Bartlett is a Professor in Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Neuroscience Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research program focuses on neural processing in the central auditory system, including diagnostics and changes in neural processing underlying age-related hearing deficits. Drs. Helfer and Bartlett are both productive researchers in the field of age-related auditory changes. Dr. Helfer’s lab is devoted to measuring hearing and cognitive changes in humans via behavioral research, while Dr. Bartlett uses mainly rodent models to investigate population, circuit and cellular changes with aging.  Dr. Arthur N. Popper is Professor Emeritus and research professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Richard R. Fay is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at Loyola, Chicago.