Melissa Duff, PhD, professor and vice chair of research for the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (DHSS), was recently elected president of the Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences (ANCDS).
Duff, who joined VUMC in 2016, is a cognitive neuroscientist and speech-language pathologist, and her primary line of research focuses on the role of hippocampal-dependent memory in language processing and communication.
Before serving as president, she had many roles within ANCDS including secretary and chair of the Education and Standards Committee, which oversees the development and implementation of education standards and guidelines related to neurologic communication disorders.
“ANCDS is the primary association for clinicians and researchers who serve individuals with neurologic communication disorders with the goal of improving the communicative lives of people affected by neurological disorders,” Duff said, “It is a tremendous honor to serve ANCDS in this role.”
Duff founded and is the director of the Vanderbilt Brain Injury Patient Registry, which serves as a unique resource for conducting large-scale basic and translational research in acquired brain injury. She is also the program director of the DHSS National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) T32 Translational Interdisciplinary Research Training in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Duff has an established record of research funding from the NIH, has published over 160 peer-review manuscripts and chapters, and has given more than 200 national and internation presentations, including invited lectures in France, England, Croatia and the Netherlands.
She has won numerous research awards including the Award for Early Career Contributions in Research from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association; the Switzer Distinguished Research Fellowship from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research; and is a Fellow of the American Speech Language Hearing Association.
