Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D. - University of Washington, Speech and Hearing, Minifie Lecture 2022

I-LABS - https://ilabs.uw.edu/

UW Speech and Hearing - https://sphsc.washington.edu/

Before the presentation, Professor and Chair of the UW Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences Adrian KC Lee, ScD provided an introduction. The transcript of that introduction is displayed below.

"It is my pleasure as Chair of the Speech and Hearing Sciences Department to welcome you here today. First, on behalf of the University of Washington, I want to acknowledge the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

Welcome to The Minifie Lecture Series. This is one of our highlight annual events in our department. Named in honor of our Professor Emeritix Fred Minifie and his wife Barbara, this lecture series showcases research from eminent scientists in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

This year, we are so proud to feature one of our own, Professor Patricia Kuhl. She joined our department in 1977, after finishing her PhD at University of Minnesota and a postdoc at Wash U Central Institute for the Deaf. Now, Prof. Kuhl is the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Learning, Co-Director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences. She is internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and studies that show how young children learn.

Dr. Kuhl's work has played a major role in demonstrating how early exposure to language alters the brain. It has implications for critical periods in development, for bilingual education and reading readiness, for developmental disabilities involving language, and for research on computer understanding of speech.

I was debating in my head how much of her accolades that I should read out, because there are so many, from being a member of the National Academy of Sciences to an Acoustical Society of America past president and Gold Medalist. She’s been invited to the White House under the Clinton administration to talk about “Early Learning and the Brain.”

But I thought I’ll tell you something more personal. On a cold snowy day in Boston, I spent 3 hours crafting an email that proved to be life changing for me. I searched online and found that there is a new MEG built at UW and I was planning to visit my friend (our 2019 Minifie Lecturer- Cara Stepp). So I thought, maybe I should write an email to see whether I can meet with Prof Kuhl (who we all know from ASA). Then I thought to myself, wow, how did I manage to sink 3 hours crafting an email… I’m a postdoc and I should be writing a manuscript instead! Within an hour, I got a response back from Pat and she wrote (and I paraphrase here): "Unfortunately, I can’t be there at the time you’re visiting Seattle. I will actually be with your mentor, Barb Shinn-Cunningham, at Helsinki in an MEG workshop. But would you consider this tenure-track position that we are currently advertising for?" Ever since that day, Pat has been an amazing mentor to me; and this is true to all the faculty in our department.

Without further ado, here’s Pat Kuhl and her talk title today:
50 Years of Speech Research: How Infants Crack the Speech Code"