People
Current Members
Andrew M. Vahabzadeh-Hagh, M.D.
Gerald S. Berke, M.D.
Professor and Chair, UCLA Head and Neck Surgery
Director, UCLA Voice Center for Medicine and the Arts
Dr. Gerald Berke is professor of surgery and chair of the Department of UCLA Head and Neck Surgery in the David Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA Health System. Dr. Berke, who is a highly respected researcher and clinician, has served as chief of the department since 2013 and prior chair of the division since 1992. He also is the director of the UCLA Voice Center for Medicine and the Arts, which he founded.
Dr. Berke has authored over 200 research manuscripts based on laryngeal physiology and voice disorders and mentored numerous research fellows. He performed the first functioning larynx transplant in animals and developed the only surgical treatment for adductor spasmodic dysphonia and pioneered many of the techniques now used by laryngologists to treat patients in an office setting. He has had 7.5 million in National Institute of Health (NIH) Grant Funding and currently has a NIH grant.
Born and raised in Southern California, he began developing his interest in the voice and ultimately his medical specialty as a rock musician and song writer. Dr. Berke came to UCLA in 1979 to complete his surgical residency, after graduating from both undergraduate and medical school at the University of Southern California, and became an assistant professor in 1984, then advanced to become professor and chair of head and neck surgery in 1992.
Outside of UCLA, Dr. Berke is the past president of the American Laryngological Association – the oldest subspecialty society in the U.S. – and past president of the Triological Society - of the nation’s primary academic society in otolaryngology. He was one of 16 directors of the American Board of Otolaryngology, which certifies ENT doctors in the US, and also a former member of the ACGME Residency Review Committee (RRC) for Otoloaryngology, which reviews and sets standards for Resident Education. In addition, he recently completed his term as member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders, which funds all NIH Grants in voice, speech, and hearing and is the Chair of the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association (NSDA) Scientific Advisory Board. He is responsible for awarding out $500,000.00 in grants by the Triological Society each year.
Dr. Berke was just honored by the American Laryngeal Association (ALA) with their highest honor for exceptional contributions to voice. In addition, Dr. Berke was named by Best Doctors as one of the best cancer doctors for 10 years in a row, along with best 1% of MD’s in the US. He was also noted as one of the best Hollywood Doctors for professional voice users.
Honors and Awards
2016 American Laryngological Association Award, American Laryngological Association
aprus at mednet dot ucla dot edu (his assistant, Anna Prus)
Office
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Dinesh K. Chhetri, M.D.
Professor of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director: Swallowing Disorders Program
I am a licensed physician and surgeon, practicing laryngologist (specialist in voice, breathing, and swallowing disorders) with research interests in laryngeal physiology. I direct the UCLA Laryngeal Physiology Laboratory where I have worked extensively with the in vivo and excised larynx models of phonation for the past 20 years in a range of investigations regarding laryngeal physiology. As a surgeon who diagnoses and treats voice disorders I am acutely aware of the main physiologic deviations that affect voice quality: posture abnormalities such as in laryngeal paresis and paralysis, and tissue abnormalities such as in vocal scars and presbylarynx (voice abnormalities due to aging). These deviations are challenging to treat effectively. Therefore, my research endeavors are devoted to understanding the basic scientific issues in these disorders and the methodology to study them, and to translate the findings into clinical practice to help individuals in our society that suffer from these disorders.
Honors and Awards
Fellow, The Triological Society
Fellow, American Laryngological Association (ALA)
Editor and Council Member, American Laryngological Association (ALA)
dchhetri at mednet dot ucla dot edu
Offices
Research Office: 31-20 Rehab Center, 1000 Veteran Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Academic Office: 62-132 CHS, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Clinical Office: UCLA Head and Neck Surgery Associates, 200 Medical Plaza, Suite 550, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Bruce R. Gerratt, Ph.D.
Professor in Residence, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
Director, Audiology & Speech Pathology Department, UCLA Medical Center
In the beginning of my research career, I was interested in understanding the role of normal and deviant laryngeal physiology in voice production and how to measure it. Despite the importance of voice quality perception and its essential relation to underlying laryngeal physiology, the literature revealed little understanding how vocal fold motion contributes to the production of disordered voice and how listeners perceive this sound. Attempting to determine what dimensions or features listeners attend to when judging voice quality using rating scales such as rough and breathy, Jody Kreiman, PhD, my colleague at UCLA, and I found large differences among listeners in the acoustic features they paid attention to. As a voice clinician, I have been concerned these results demonstrate that traditional rating protocols are not well suited to measuring pathologic vocal quality. This remains a troubling condition, because patients with dysphonia are often most concerned by the deviation in their voice quality. Further, without reliable and valid measures for voice quality, researchers and clinicians have no standard method to determine which surgical or behavioral interventions for a voice disorder is more effective than another, a considerable problem in laryngology. We continue to study the issues that may provide a more valid measurement of voice quality.
Honors and Awards
Fellow, Acoustical Society of America
bgerratt at ucla dot edu
Office
1000 Veteran Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1795
Jody Kreiman, Ph.D.
Professor of Head and Neck Surgery and Linguistics, UCLA
Jody Kreiman, PhD, is Professor of Head and Neck Surgery and Linguistics at UCLA. She received her doctoral degree in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1987, after which she pursued post-doctoral studies with Bruce Gerratt at UCLA, joining the faculty in 1992. She has ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Linguistics, Electrical Engineering, and Musicology, and serves as participating faculty in the Department of Communication Studies and the Program in Biomedical Engineering. Her studies of voice perception have examined speaker recognition, the neuropsychology of voice perception and recognition, and issues surrounding the psychology and psychoacoustics of voice quality perception and measurement. This research has produced the standard models explaining listeners’ behavior in these tasks. She also has experience with laryngeal imaging and with voice production studies, through collaborations with Dr. Zhaoyan Zhang and other colleagues in Head and Neck Surgery and through participation in NSF-funded studies with Drs. Abeer Alwan and Patricia Keating. Her research is funded by NIH and NSF.
Honors and Award
Fellow, Acoustical Society of America
Fellow, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
jkreiman at ucla dot edu
Office
31-19 Rehab Center
1000 Veteran Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1795
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Jennifer L. Long, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Residence, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
Honors and Awards
American Laryngological Association Young Faculty Award
jlong at mednet dot ucla dot edu
Office
32-20 Rehab Center
1000 Veteran Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1795
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Andrew M. Vahabzadeh-Hagh, M.D.
Clinical Instructor, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
Honors and Awards
Paul H. Ward Society 29th Annual Scientific Session 1st Place Presentation Award, ‘17
Head & Neck Scientific Poster Competition Award, 119th Annual Triological Society Meeting
American Laryngological Association 2016 Resident Research Award
AVahabzadehhagh at mednet dot ucla dot edu
Office
62-132
10833 Le Conte Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Zhaoyan Zhang, Ph.D.
Professor in Residence, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
As a primary means of communication, voice plays an important role in our everyday life. However, voice disorders are unfortunately common and can affect a speaker’s personal identity and the ability to effectively communicate, thus limiting a person's ability to participate in educational, occupational, or social activities. My main research interest is to understand how we produce and control our voice, and when voice changes due to aging or medical conditions, how to restore it to normal. Specifically, my research goal is to establish a cause-effect relationship between voice physiology, voice production, and ultimately voice quality perception. Clinically, such knowledge would lead to the development of a physically-based theory of voice production that is capable of better prediction of voice outcomes of clinical intervention for voice disorders, thus improving both diagnosis and treatment. More generally, the establishment of this relationship could lead to a better understanding of the laryngeal adjustments that we use to differentiate speech sounds and convey personal information such as linguistic meanings, social status, and emotion. Such understandings may also lead to the development of improved computer programs for more natural speech synthesis and speech/speaker recognition.
Honors and Awards
Fellow, Acoustical Society of America
zyzhang at ucla dot edu
Office
31-25 Rehab Center
1000 Veteran Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1795
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Alumni (partial list)
Barbara Blankenship, PhD. Doctoral student, 1994-1997. Currently Special Projects Coordinator, Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA
Dinesh Chhetri, MD. Resident researcher, 1999. Currently Associate Professor-in-Residence, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
Michael Döllinger, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2003-2005. Currently Professor, Department of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology, University Hospital Erlangen
Ana Paula Petriu Ferreira Engelbert, PhD. Mentor, Fulbright/CAPES fellow, 2013-2014. Currently Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Federal University of Technology, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
Melissa Epstein, PhD. Doctoral student, 1998-2001. Currently IRB Director at Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Christina Esposito, PhD. Doctoral student, 2004-2006. Currently Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, Macalester College
Marc Garellek, PhD. Doctoral student and post-doctoral fellow, 2010-2014. Currently Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of California San Diego
Mika Ito, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2004-2006. Currently Patent Agent, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Seattle, WA
Sameer ud Dowla Khan, PhD. Doctoral student, 2006-2008. Currently Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Reed College
Juergen Neubauer, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2004-2006. Currently Assistant Research Professor, Mathematical and Computational Modeling Sciences Center, Arizona State University
Blas Payri, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2000-2001. Currently in Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Kristin Precoda, PhD. Doctoral student, 1997 - 1998. Currently Director, Speech Technology and Research Laboratory, SRI International
Robin Samlan, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2012-2013. Currently Assistant Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing and Otolaryngology, University of Arizona
Rosario Signorello, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 2014-2016. Currently Postdoctoral Researcher, Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle
Daniel Silverman, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 1995-1997. Currently Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and Language Development, San José State University
Caroline Smith, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 1993-1995. Currently Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico
Sumiko Takayanagi, PhD. Post-doctoral fellow, 1997 - 1998. Currently Statistician, Center for Vulnerable Populations Research, School of Nursing, UCLA