Karen Helfer

Karen Helfer is a professor and former chair of the Department of Communication Disorders in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences. She was a Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow in the Office of Faculty Development during the 2019-2020 academic year. Her research program, which is funded by NIH-NIDCD, focuses on how aging affects speech perception in complex listening situations with multiple talkers. Helfer has a special interest in studying changes in speech understanding and listening effort that occur early in the aging process (i.e., in middle-aged adults) and is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.