Our Research Team

Lori Leibold is the Director​ of Hearing Research at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She completed her Master​​​’s degree in Audiology at the University of Western Ontario. After working as a clinical audiologist, she completed her Ph.D. in Lynne Werner’s Infant Heari​ng Laboratory at the University of Washington. Next, she completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Walt Jesteadt and Dr. Donna Neff at Boys Town National Research Hospital. Dr. Leibold was a faculty member in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for nine years before returning to Boys Town National Research Hospital in 2015.​

Heather Porter, Ph.D., Senior Audiology Research Associate

Heather.Porter@boystown.org

Heather Porter is a Senior Audiology Research Associate within the Human Auditory Development Lab. She completed her clinical (Au.D.) and research training (Ph.D.) at Vanderbilt University, with a dissertation examining binaural hearing in children with developmental delays. Following graduation, she joined the auditory research group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examining hearing-in-noise difficulties experienced by children and adults, and the mechanisms responsible for auditory development in children. She became immersed in a clinical setting at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, specializing in testing children with complex medical histories and extensive developmental delays. Most recently, she joined the Center for Hearing Research at Boys Town National Research Hospital, where she continues to examine mechanisms of auditory development in children and explores methods to improve clinical assessment of hearing in children, including children with significant motor and/or developmental delays

Margaret K. Miller, Au.D., Research Audiologist

Margaret.Miller@boystown.org

Maggie Miller is a research audiologist in the Human Auditory Development Lab at Boys Town National Research Hospital.  Dr. Miller completed her clinical audiology training at the University of Texas in Austin in 2011.  Before coming to Boys Town, Dr. Miller worked as a research audiologist at the New York University School of Medicine, with a focus on cochlear implant adaptation and bimodal listening.  Currently, Dr. Miller is responsible for recruiting and testing research participants in a wide variety of auditory development studies, as well as general lab organization.  In fall 2016, she will take on the position of project coordinator on an upcoming grant related to clinical bilingual speech perception.  Dr. Miller’s main clinical and research interests include cochlear implants and auditory development related to speech perception in complex listening environments in both pediatric and adult populations.

Manuel Vicente, B.S., Research Assistant

Manuel.Vicente@boystown.org

​Manuel Vicente is working as a Research Assistant in the Human Auditory development Lab at Boys Town National Research Hospital. Before joining the lab, Manuel acquired his Bachelors of Science at Baylor University and had previously worked in research​ at the Caribbean Neurological Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the future, he would like to continue his studies in a medical related field.