One of Our Own Receives Penn State's Highest Honor

Bob Hillman has been awarded Penn State's highest honor this past week, as he became a Distinguished Alumnus.  The coolest part of the whole deal will be seeing Greg Fredericks, Bob and others in tuxedos!  On multiple occasions. That is if photos finally emerge. And somebody better nominate this for Performance of the Year on the right sidebar! (Done! Thank you to the anonymous contributor.)

Robert E. Hillman of Weston, Massachusetts, is the research director of the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a professor of surgery and health sciences and technology at Harvard-MIT, and a professor of communication sciences and disorders and director of research programs at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. He earned his bachelor's and master’s degrees in speech pathology and audiology in 1974 and 1975, respectively, from the College of Education.

Bob Hillman '74 on the White Course.

Robert E. Hillman, PhD, CCC-SLP

Director of Research Programs, Adjunct Professor, Comm. Sci. & Disorders

Dr. Robert Hillman is Director of Research Programs, and Adjunct Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and the Center for Interprofessional Studies and Innovation.
Dr. Hillman is also currently the Co-Director and Research Director of the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Surgery and a member of the Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology faculty at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Hillman has been awarded over 26 grants from governmental and private sources to support his research. He has had research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1984. His research and over 100 publications have focused on mechanisms for normal and disordered voice production, evaluation and development of methods for alaryngeal (laryngectomy) speech rehabilitation, development of objective physiologic and acoustic measures of voice and speech production, and evaluation of methods used to treat voice disorders.
In the past Dr. Hillman has been actively involved in the design and review of research programs at NIH, having served on the "Expert Panel on Voice and Voice Disorders to Update the National Strategic Research Plan" for the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and as a project site visitor for the National Cancer Institute, and as a core member of the Motor Function and Speech Rehabilitation Study Section at the NIH Center for Scientific Review. He has also served as an editorial consultant and on the editorial boards of several professional journals, and has been an invited/keynote speaker at over 40 national and international meetings.
Dr. Hillman is an elected Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and is one of only five speech-language pathologists in the country to be elected as an Associate Member of the American Laryngological Association (a physician’s organization).
Additional awards he has received include elected membership in Phi Kappa Phi Honorary Society (1975), academic tenure at Boston University (1986), Certificate of Appreciation from the Veterans Administration Cooperative Studies Program (1991), Award of Merit from Sargent College at Boston University (1992), Editor’s Award from the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for publication of the article of highest merit in speech research for 1996, Casselberry Award from the American Laryngological Association for co-authorship (with Dr. Steven Zeitels) of the outstanding manuscript in laryngology (1998), two Partners in Excellence Awards for accomplishments at the MGH Institute of Health Professions (2000), and an Alumni Fellow Award from the Pennsylvania State University (2008) given by the President of the University to select alumni who are recognized leaders in their professions.
Most recently Dr. Hillman has received the Broyles-Maloney Award from the American Bronchoesophalogical Association for outstanding accomplishments in advancing the art and science of bronchoesophagology (2010); the Manuel Garcia Prize (2010) from the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics for outstanding scientific contributions to the official journal of IALP and to the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders; the 2011 Willard R. Zemlin Lecture and Award from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Special Interest Division for Speech Science to recognize an outstanding speech scientist who has "demonstrated a record of outstanding contributions to the broad spectrum of issues concerning speech science."; the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2011) which is the highest honor that the Association can bestow to “recognize individuals whose contributions have been of such excellence that they have enhanced or altered the course of the Professions" and the 2013 Certificate of Achievement from the Voice Foundation.

Education:

BS, Speech Pathology, Pennsylvania State University
MS, Speech Pathology, Pennsylvania State University
PhD, Speech Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

Research Interest:

Mechanisms for normal and disordered voice production, evaluation and development of methods for alaryngeal (laryngectomy) speech rehabilitation, development of objective physiologic and acoustic measures of voice and speech production, and evaluation of methods used to treat voice disorders.

Publications & Presentations:

Mehta, D.D, Zanartu, M., Quatieri, T., Deliyski, D.D., Hillman, R.E. “Investigating acoustic correlates of human vocal fold vibratory phase asymmetry through modeling and laryngeal high-speed videoendoscopy”, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 130(6), 3999-4009, 2011.
Mehta, D.D.,  Zeitels, S.M., Burns, J.A.,  Friedman, A.D., Deliyski, D.D., Hillman, R.E. “High-speed videoendoscopic analysis of relationships between cepstral-based acoustic measures and voice production mechanisms in patients undergoing phonomicrosurgery”. Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology, 121, 341–347, 2012.
D.D. Mehta, M. Zañartu, S.W. Feng, H.A. Cheyne II, R.E. Hillman. (2012). Mobile voice health monitoring using a wearable accelerometer sensor and a smartphone platform. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 59(11), 3090–3096.
N. Roy, J. Barkmeier-Kraemer, T. Eadie, M.P. Sivasankar, D. Mehta, D. Paul, R.E. Hillman (2012). Evidence-based clinical voice assessment: A systematic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22, 212–226.
M. Zañartu, J.C. Ho, D.D. Mehta, R.E. Hillman, and G.R. Wodicka, (2013) “Subglottal impedance-based inverse filtering of speech sounds using neck surface acceleration”, IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Proc., 21(9), pp. 1929-1939. DOI: 10.1109/TASL.2013.2263138 link.
See Curriculum Vitae for complete publications, presentations and research.
PubMed listing of 48 Hillman publications, with abstracts.

Links:

Curriculum Vitae