Please join me in congratulating Rita Patel, associate professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, on receiving a $3.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on exercise-induced paradoxical vocal fold motion.
Rita’s award represents the first NIH-funded R01 grant in the United States dedicated to this condition, which affects approximately one million people and remains widely underdiagnosed and poorly understood.
The interdisciplinary project team—which includes Stephen Carter and Timothy Mickleborough from the School of Public Health-Bloomington, as well as researchers from the IU School of Medicine—developed a novel, custom-built sensor capable of identifying exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction in real-time, field-based environments. This groundbreaking approach allows them to capture distinct respiratory and anatomical changes as they occur, advancing understanding of the underlying pathophysiology and transforming diagnostic evaluation and evidence-based management.
Congratulations, Professor Patel!