Plan for Concentration

Meet with the Concentration Advisor by May 1st of G1

Submit Plan for Concentration by June  1st  of G1

In Spring of the G1 year, each student chooses a Concentration Advisor to help them craft a coordinated set of coursework, research, and independent study in a specific research area to be tested in the Qualifying Exam. The Concentration Advisor typically also serves as Chair of the Qualifying Exam Committee. Due to this, the Concentration Advisor cannot be the student's Dissertation Advisor. 

The Concentration Advisor and other advisors (e.g. academic, research, etc.) will help the student select elective coursework. The combination of coursework and research must lead to the student mastering a significant accomplishment in an academic area. As the student progresses in research and masters fundamentals, the Qualifying Exam tests concepts in the concentration area. 

The research project conducted before the Qualifying Exam should have a scope equivalent to half-time effort for one academic term or full-time effort for a summer, and apply scientific principles from the chosen Concentration Area. 

Elective coursework can be chosen from the full catalog of Harvard and MIT science and engineering offerings, including electives organized by the SHBT Program. Taking challenging elective coursework is encouraged to further knowledge and expertise. Please find the list of electives here. 

Concentration Advisors and their areas of expertise are available below. 

Plan for Concentration Form

Concentration Advisors and their areas of expertise are:

Sofia Vallila Rohter
Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Dr. Vallila Rohter studies learning in individuals with aphasia, with the hypothesis that predicting whether a patient will improve following therapy instruction depends upon their language ability and their learning ability. In collaboration with Brigham...
Sofia Vallila Rohter

Jeffrey R Holt
Professor of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
Sensory transduction converts stimulus information into electrical information and is at the interface between the world around us and the brain. To understand how information is encoded and transmitted to the brain we study the sensory cells and neurons...
Jeffrey Holt

Satrajit Ghosh
Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
A fundamental problem in psychiatry is that there are no biological markers for diagnosing mental illness or for indicating how best to treat it. Treatment decisions are based entirely on symptoms, and doctors and their patients will typically try one...
Satrajit Ghosh

Josh McDermott
Chair of Curriculum Committee, Doctoral Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT)
Associate Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Synopsis of Research Interests: The Amazing Success of Biological Auditory Systems Humans routinely perform tasks with sound that remain impossible for even the most powerful and sophisticated machine hearing systems. Following a conversation on a noisy...
Josh McDermott

Daryush Mehta
Director of Student Affairs, Doctoral Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT)
Associate Professor of Surgery
he/him/his
Daryush Mehta is Director of the Voice Science and Technology Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center. Daryush is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Affiliated Faculty and Director of Student Affairs in the Speech and...
mehta_daryush.jpg

Daniel B. Polley
Professor of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery
Our research interests lie in understanding the mechanisms and clinical implications of brain plasticity. Auditory brain plasticity exhibits a fundamental duality, a yin and yang, in that it is both a source and possible solution for various types of...
Dan Polley

Sunil Puria
Director of Admissions, Doctoral Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT)
Associate Professor of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery
Directing the OtoBiomechanics group in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, Dr. Sunil Puria studies fundamental and applied cochlear and middle ear mechanics. His efforts to provide an understanding of auditory mechanisms with mathematical models rooted in...
Sunil Puria

Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
Principal Research Scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics
Dr. Shattuck-Hufnagel investigates the cognitive structures and processes involved in speech production planning, particularly at the level of speech sound sequencing. Her work with speech error patterns and with the acoustic analyses of prosody has...
Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel