The Speech and Auditory Research Lab (SpAR Lab) is located in the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center—a state-of-the-art, LEED Silver Certified building—and led by Lauren Calandruccio, professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.
Research in the SpAR Lab focuses on studying how people are able to understand speech in noisy environments. In particular, we are interested in studying the differences between people with normal hearing and people with hearing loss and their ability to understand speech in noise. We are also interested in helping to build an evidence base for clinical practice that focuses on people who have hearing loss and do not speak English as their native or only language. The main objective of our lab is to improve the quality of life for those with auditory communication difficulties through improved clinical assessments and interventions.
About the Principal Investigator
Lauren Calandruccio is the principal investigator of the SpAR Lab. She started her career in audiology as an undergrad at Indiana University, Bloomington in the lab of Larry Humes. She worked as a clinical audiologist at Riley Hospital for Children, Indianapolis Medical Center while completing her clinical fellowship year. She returned to graduate school at Syracuse University, where she earned her PhD in 2007, while working with Karen Doherty and Laurel Carney.
After leaving Syracuse, Lauren completed postdoctoral training at Northwestern University where she worked with Sumitrajit Dhar (Communication Sciences and Disorders) and Ann Bradlow (Linguistics). She has proudly served on the faculty of Queens College of the City University of New York (Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders) and the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Department of Allied Health Sciences, Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences). She joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University in the fall of 2015 where she now holds the Louis D. Beaumont University Professor chair.