Dear friends and colleagues of Haskins Laboratories,

This past year has been a particularly exciting and productive one for the Haskins community of research scientists.  In addition to many new research findings on language, speech, reading, and the brain, this has been a time of new and innovative projects across all of these domains (please refer to our website for highlights of our most recent Haskins publications).  Indeed, since January our researchers have secured several new NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) grants which is a testament to the cutting edge research from our teams of Haskins scientists.  In addition, and of particular note, we were thrilled to obtain a renewal of our “A-40” program project grant which directly investigates the link between speech and reading in many populations and multiple languages, and is the longest running continuously funded grant in NIH history!  This new five year project, led by Dr. Jay Rueckl, includes new approaches to building computational models of typical and atypical speech and reading development.  With multiple neuroimaging techniques, Haskins will begin to explore the brain bases of language and literacy from pre-school into adulthood in contrastive orthographies.  I am convinced that the next phase of A-40 discoveries will produce unprecedented understanding of human communication in all its forms and will show how developmental difficulties that emerge in the first few years of life, put reading at risk.  I continue to be pleased to see our senior scientists, and a new generation of talented researchers, bringing state-of-the-art approaches and new technologies to old and thorny theoretical and clinical issues.  Other newly funded projects include two NIH projects by Dr. David Ostry and colleagues using state of the art neuroimaging to reveal key brain circuits in adaptive learning relevant to somatosensory, sensory, and motor processes. These studies promise to inform not only basic sensorimotor theory but will also have implications for brain injured populations.
 
Haskins also has long been committed to making sure that scientific findings are shared with the people who most need to hear about them.  During this past March, a second successful a Haskins Training Institute (HTI) conference was held (co-directed by Einar Mencl and Joseph Cardone) which was geared for speech language specialists focused on early speech development and childhood disorders of speech.  The next conference will be about reading, and will be held in the Fall of 2013 (with additional information to follow on our website).

In closing, this has been an exciting and productive year at the Laboratories!  While grant funding success has been outstanding (again a reflection of the vibrant community of junior and senior investigators working as teams), as I mentioned last year, we are still in a time of shrinking federal funding levels for science in the United States.  With the current economic climate, there is also shrinking federal support for “out of the box” research in general, and we therefore ask for your generous support in helping us to foster the next generation of groundbreaking studies here at Haskins Laboratories.  As we come to the end of our celebratory 75th anniversary of our long proud history, I feel certain that, with your support, we will continue to be a nexus for innovative research going forward.

I sincerely thank you, in advance, for your continued interest and support.

Kenneth R. Pugh
President and Director of Research

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