Since 2011, the DeLTA Center has funded student-led interdisciplinary research projects that span multiple disciplinary approaches to learning and development. Our goal is to seed new and exciting trainee-led research that creates or enhances collaboration across the DeLTA Center, and that highlights the unique contributions of a multi-disciplinary center. This includes work with animals, typical developing humans (including infants, children, adults and older adults), atypical populations, and computational models. It can also include community engaged research and civic science. 

Calls generally go out each semester.  Grants are reviewed students using an NIH review model, and students ultimately make the funding decisions.  This program thus provides a great platform for training and professional development for both the applicants and the reviewers.

Check out our current request for proposals for more information.

 

2025

PI: Ha, Hyoji
Mentors: Susan Cook and Ece Demi-Lira (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Do You See What I Mean? fNIR-Based Hyperscanning During Face-to-face Visual Imagery Communication.

PI: Park, Chaewon
Mentors: Kristi Hendrickson (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Leah Zimmermann (Iowa Reading Research Center)
The Relative Contributions of Phonology and Orthography in Written Word Recognition in Children with Dyslexia.

PI: Pribyl, Katie
Mentors: Beth Walker and Phillip Combiths (Communication Sciences and Disorders)
Evaluation of the Morphosyntactic Development of Monolingual Spanish Speaking Children with Hearing Aids.

2023

PI: Demko, Zach
Mentors: Isaac Petersen (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Jake Oleson (Biostatistics)
Creating a novel assessment system to assess change in a latent externalizing construct across development while accounting for heterotypic continuity.

PI: Hill, Melissa
Mentors: Macauley, Stewart (Communication Sciences and Disorders) 
Mismatch of text complexity in grade-school curricula and standardized language assessments

2021

PI: Kim, Jina
Mentors: Kristi Hendrickson (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Wessel (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
 Language Inhibitory processing of Auditory Sentences.

 PI: Muegge, John
Mentors: Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Shea (Spanish and Portuguese)
 Female accelerated neuronal development after prenatal stress: a role for IL-6.

PI: Maurer, Sara
Mentors: Hannah Stevens (Psychiatry) 
Examining the Role of Proficiency and Cognitive Control in Second Language Processing.

PI: Parr, Morgan Di Napoli
Mentors: Jodie Plumert (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Joe Kearney (Computer Sciences)
The Role of Executive Functioning Skills in Predicting Individual Differences in Children’s Performance in Simple and Complex Motor Timing Tasks

2020

PI: Mary Aldugom
Mentors: Susan Cook (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and ()
Is Gesture Effective Across Presentation Types of the Same Mathematical Concept?

 PI: Banu Gumusoglu
Mentors: Mark Santillan (Obstetrics and Gyncology) and Lane Strathearn (Pediatrics)
Serotonin-immune signaling dysregulation and neurodevelopmental outcomes of preeclampsia

2019

PI: Maria Carriel
Mentors: Matthew Lira (Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences) and Ece Demir-Lira (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Neural correlates for successful spatial problem solving in chemistry education .

PI: Larissa Jordan
Mentors: Kristi Hendrickson (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Rob Jones (Neurology)
The automaticty of semantic organization in indivdiuals with mild cognitive impairment.

2018

PI: Klein, Kelsey
Mentors: Beth Walker (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Real-time spoken word recognition processes in children who are deaf and hard of hearing.

PI: Roembke, Tanja
Mentors: Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Eliot Hazeltine (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Effects of Variability on Learning in Motor Analog of Reading.

PI: Pake Melland
Mentors: Rodica Curtu (Mathematics) and Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
A neural network approach to model auditory category learning.

2017

PI: Sarrett, McCall
Mentors: Christine Shea (Spanish and Portuguese) and Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Second Language Acquisition: Integrated or Separate Lexica.

 PI: Gumusoglu, Banu
Mentors: Mark Santillan (Obstetrics and Gyncology) and Hanna Stevens (Psychiatry)
Prenatal preeclampsia impact on neurodevelopment via immune mechanisms.

 PI: Naomi Hertsberg-Rodgers
Mentors: Tricia Zebrowski (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Treat / McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Temperament, cognitive bias, and perceived communication difficulty Among adolescents who stutter.

2016

PI: Nicole Hendrix
Mentors: Megan? Nicpon (College of Education) and Susan Cook (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Embedded Instructional Gesture and Early Shape Learning: A Comparison of Seeing and Doing.

PI: Maura Curran
Mentors: Amanda Van Horne (Owen) (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Youjia Hua (College of Education)
Causal Adverbial Production, Language Intervention and Science Learning.

2015

PI: Catie HIlliard
Mentors: Susan Cook (Psychological and Brain Sciences) and Melissa Duff (Communication Sciences and Disorders)
Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the role of gesture in communication and memory.

2014

PI: Marcin Wróblewski
Mentors: Karla McGregor and Ruth Bentler (Communication Sciences and Disorders)
Development of multisensory integration in noisy and reverberant listening conditions: linguistic and cognitive predictors in school age children.

 PI: Arianna Rigon
Mentors: Melissa Duff (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Michelle Voss (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Individual differences in facial mimicry: a functional connectivity study.

 PI: Wijeakumar, Sobana
Mentors: John Spencer and Michelle Voss (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
An investigation of age-related decline in visual working memory

 PI: Jessica Hall
Mentors: Amanda Van Horne (Owen) (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Thomas Farmer (Psychological and Brain Sciences (left))
The relationship between statistical learning ability and sensitivity to verb bias in children with and without SLI.

2013

PI: Catie Hilliard
Mentors: Susan Cook and Jodie Plumert (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
High-Stakes Communication about Safety – Gesture Makes the Point.

PI: Tanja Roembke
Mentors: Bob McMurray and Ed Wasserman (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Word learning in humans and pigeons – What role does pruning play?

PI: Bryan Brown
Mentors: Tricia Zebrowski (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and John Spencer (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Lateralization of Cortical Activity Associated with Speech Production.

2012

PI: Shanju Lin
Mentors: Amanda Owen and Karla McGregor (Communication Sciences and Disorders)
Use of gestures when describing motion events .

PI: David Warren
Mentors: Melissa Duff (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Modeling word learning in adults with memory impairments after brain damage.

2011

PI: Nate Klooster
Mentors: Melissa Duff (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Susan Cook (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Gestures make memories, but what kind? The cognitive and neural mechanisms of hand gesture.

PI: Tim Wifall
Mentors: Eliot Hazeltine and Bob McMurray (Psychological and Brain Sciences)
How does perceptual and motoric similarity affect learning?