Maura O'Fallon

PhD Candidate, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Communication Sciences and Disorders

Biography

Maura O’Fallon is a licensed speech-language pathologist and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She received her BA in psychology and Spanish from the University of Virginia, and her MA in speech-language pathology from the University of Maryland. After graduating from the University of Maryland, she worked as a school-based speech-language pathologist for five years before returning to graduate school to pursue her doctoral degree. While working clinically, Maura provided therapy to students with a wide range of speech-language needs, as well as associated challenges with learning, literacy and behavior. 

Maura’s research interests are driven by her clinical experiences and observations. Broadly, she is interested in ways that caregivers support children’s early language and literacy development, and how clinicians can work with families to optimize child language outcomes. Maura is further interested in how child language abilities relate to their development in other domains that are critical for academic success, namely literacy and behavior. Her dissertation research, which is supported by an F31 award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH; 1F31DC019864-01), will examine the connection between child behavior and early language interactions with caregivers. 

Curriculum Vitae