Current Doctoral Students & Post-Doctoral Fellows

Emilie Lowell, M.S., CCC-SLP is a doctoral student in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her master's degree in speech-language pathology from Vanderbilt University in 2016. Following this, she completed her clinical fellowship at the Boston VA Medical Center and continued to serve inpatient and outpatient populations there for several years before joining the Upper Airway Dysfunction lab in 2021. Emilie's research interests include translational research, improvements to instrumental evaluations of swallowing, and evidence-based treatments for neurogenic dysphagia.

Katya Villarreal, M.S., CCC-SLP is a doctoral student in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her master's degree in speech-language pathology from Teachers College in 2021 and completed her clinical fellowship at Isabella’s Center for Rehabilitation in Manhattan. Katya joined the Upper Airway Dysfunction Laboratory in Fall 2022 and her research interests include cough and swallowing rehabilitation.

Justine Dallal-York, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, BCS-S is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Laboratory for the Study of Upper Airway Dysfunction at Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Science with a concentration in Neuromuscular Plasticity at the University of Florida in 2022. Justine's research is focused on understanding the intersections between swallow, cough, and breathing and how these relationships inform pulmonary health in complex surgical and critically ill populations. As a Speech-Language Pathologist and Board-Certified Swallowing Specialist, Justine has a passion for conducting pragmatic, clinically grounded research with a health equity lens. 

Kelly Veit, M.S., CCC-SLP is a doctoral student in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her master's degree in speech-language pathology from New York University in 2022, followed by the completion of her clinical fellowship at the Laboratory for the Study of Upper Airway Dysfunction at Teachers College in 2023. Kelly's research interests focus on the clinical implementation of cough and swallow interventions, with a strong commitment to bridging the gap between research and clinical practice.

Leire Escalada-Cebadero is a doctoral student in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds two Master’s Degrees in Experimental and Theoretical Linguistics (University of the Basque Country, Spain) and in Hispanic Linguistics (University of Illinois, Chicago). Leire joined the Communication, Technology, and Language Diversity Lab at Teachers College in Fall 2024. Her research interests focus on the detection of speech impairments in Parkinson' s Disease (PD) and how to control them through the use and development of applications. Leire is also strongly interested in improving conversational intelligibility in the English-Spanish bilingual community suffering from PD in daily conversations to make their quality of life better.

Maggie Barilka, MS, CCC-SLP, is a doctoral student in the Laboratory for the Study of Upper Airway Dysfunction at Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her Master's degree in CSD from Teachers College in 2022, and subsequently completed her Clinical Fellowship at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following fellowship, she worked at Columbia Voice and Swallow Center for 2 years before deciding to pursue a research career.  Her research interest includes swallowing and cough function in neurogenic, oncologic and transplant populations. 

Christine Vail received her M.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Rush University. She practiced as a clinician for five years at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago, specializing in pediatric rehabilitation, prior to applying for her doctorate. Christine is currently a doctoral student under Dr. Carol Scheffner Hammer. Her research interests include monolingual and bilingual child language acquisition, cultural and environmental influences on language development, and best-practice early language and literacy intervention.

Linye Jing, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Developing Language and Literacy Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her Ph.D. in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at New York University. Linye's research focuses on bilingual language development and disorders, specifically in the area of syntactic complexity. As a language researcher and a mother of two bilingual children, she is actively involved in community outreach activities that support bilingual children’s language development, educate caregivers and teachers about language disorders and advocate for bilinguals’ rights to communicate in the languages they prefer.

Jiyoung Choi received an M.A. in Linguistics with a concentration on Computational Linguistics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) and an M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology at Lehman College, CUNY. She has taught speech and language courses as an adjunct lecturer at Queens College and Lehman College, CUNY. She is a New York and New Jersey State licensed speech-language pathologist (SLP) and has worked as a Korean-English bilingual SLP. Her research interests include spoken language processing, artificial intelligence (AI) in speech intelligibility in children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy, and treatments and assessments of speech intelligibility in individuals with cerebral palsy and other neuromotor disorders.