Research at AIM

Dr. Daniel Berch is a cognitive, developmental, and educational psychologist with expertise in mathematical cognition and mathematical learning disabilities, and is Senior Editor of the book Why is Math So Hard for Some Children?. He was a member of the National Center for Learning Disabilities Professional Advisory Board for six years, and currently sits on the Advisory Board of the NSF-funded Many Numbers Project aimed at expanding the global network studying early numeracy. Dr. Berch was the Founding Chair of the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology as well as their Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science. In his prior federal position as the Associate Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at NICHD, Dr. Berch served as an ex officio member of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel commissioned by President George W. Bush.

Dr. Kate Cain is a Head of Department and Professor at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Her research revolves around the different cognitive and language-related skills that underpin the development of reading and listening comprehension, both in atypical and typical populations. Her work has identified several higher-level skill impairments that may be causally linked to poor comprehension, including the ability to generate inferences, knowledge and use of reading strategies, and the ability to construct coherent and integrated narratives. She serves as the President of the Society of the Scientific Study of Reading and is an elected member of the governing board of the Society for Text and Discourse.

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is a bilingual speech and language pathologist, a certified dyslexia therapist, and a qualified instructor. She is the President of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center and is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Houston, TIMES. Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is a national and international speaker and has published research articles and interventions for literacy skills among Spanish-speaking English learners. She is also the author of the book, Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction. Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan recently collaborated with AIM on creation of new AIM Pathways educator training focused on supporting English Language Learners.

Dr. Compton is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University and is the past director of the Florida Center for Reading & Research (FCRR). He earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with a specialization in learning disabilities. Dr. Compton is the past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and currently serves as associate-editor of Scientific Study of Reading. Dr. Compton and other FCRR researchers are frequent visitors to AIM Academy where they conduct ongoing literacy research such as Project Wordy and the Variable Vowel Collaborative.

Dr. Michelle Duda is a senior level Board Certified Behavior Analyst and helps support AIM's work in implementation science. She is an associate director and major contributor to the OSEP funded Center for State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence-based practices (SISEP). She serves as a consultant, researcher, trainer, professor and published author specializing in education, early intervention, applied behavior analysis and autism. Dr. Duda has worked closely with AIM on using implementation science to develop its fidelity tools as part of its Integrated Literacy Model.

Dr. Linnea Ehri’s literacy research has provided scientific evidence clarifying how words are read automatically by sight, how children develop word reading and spelling skill, and how instruction can facilitate acquisition of these processes. She has published more than 150 papers and served on the National Reading Panel which was commissioned by the U.S. Congress to report on research-based methods of teaching reading effectively to elementary students. Dr. Ehri recently collaborated with AIM in the creation of an AIM Pathways training module focused on her research. She also worked with AIM to create a set of mnemonic alphabet cards and instructional scripts as a classroom resource.

Dr. Steven Graham has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how writing can be used to support reading and learning. Graham is the former editor of Exceptional Children, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Writing Research, Focus on Exceptional Children, and Journal of Educational Psychology. He has served as an advisor to a variety of organizations, including UNESCO, National Institute of Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Zuckerberg Initiative, National Writing Project, Institute of Educational Sciences and the College Board.

Nancy Hennessy has delivered keynote addresses, workshops, and training to educators nationally and internationally on topics including professional development, strategic planning, and components of skilled reading and writing and dyslexia. She is the author of The Reading Comprehension Blueprint and a past president of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), is an experienced teacher and administrator. Nancy was integral to the development of AIM’s Integrated Literacy Model and has been a fixture presenting at and helping to moderate AIM’s annual Research to Practice Symposium events.

Tiffany P. Hogan, PhD,CCC-SLP is a Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at MGH Institute of Health Professions and a Research Associate at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hogan has over 100 peer-reviewed papers on the genetic, neurologic, and behavioral links between oral and written language, with a focus on improving assessment and intervention in schools for neurodiverse children with Developmental Language Disorder and Dyslexia. Her advocacy for children with language, speech, and literacy differences has led her to co-found a DLD informational website: www.dldandme.org, host a podcast(www.seehearspeakpodcast.com), advise on www.readinguniverse.org, organize an annual conference on implementation science, and contribute information for articles in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and EdWeek. Dr. Hogan is passionate about ensuring children receive evidence-based assessment and instruction, creating environments in which neurodiversity is cherished, and listening to and learning from those who work with children in schools and clinics.

Katharine Pace Miles, Ph.D. is an associate professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Miles’s research interests include orthographic mapping, high frequency word learning, reading interventions, and literacy instruction that is both developmentally appropriate and grounded in the science of reading. Dr. Miles is the academic advisor for Reading Go!, an evidence-based intervention for first and second grade students. She is the author of Reading Ready, an explicit and systematic word reading curriculum for kindergarten and first grade students. Dr. Miles is also the co-founder and principal investigator of CUNY Reading Corps, which improves preservice teacher training and provides free high-dosage tutoring to over 2,000 historically underserved NYC students per year. Dr. Miles’s latest projects involve opening new advanced graduate coursework in reading science and finding more ways to bring free tutoring to emergent readers in need of support.

Tim Odegard, Ph.D., is a psychology professor at Middle Tennessee State University, holding the Katherine Davis Murfree Chair of Excellence in Dyslexic Studies. He leads the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia, showcasing a deep commitment to education through service in various leadership roles.

As Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Dyslexia and consulting editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Tim is a key contributor to advancing the Science of Reading. He's dedicated to improving dyslexia services and has held significant service positions for organizations like the International Dyslexia Association and the Academic Language Therapy Association. For two decades, Tim has influenced literacy initiatives nationally, aiding teacher training and advocating for universal screening for risk prevention.

Dr. Kenneth Pugh’s research falls primarily in two broad domains: cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics. A fundamental interest continues to be research into the neurobiology of typical and atypical language and reading development in children. He served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the International Dyslexia Association for 15 years, and currently sits on the Scientific Advisory Panel for Dyslexia International in Paris, is a corresponding member of the Rodin Remediation Academy in Stockholm, a member of the Board of Visitors for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Scientific Advisory Council for the Child Mind Institute in New York among others. Dr. Pugh established the Haskins Global Literacy Hub in 2019. AIM was the first educational partner in this international group and works with Haskins researchers on ongoing literacy research in its on-campus EEG lab.

Dr. Hollis Scarborough, a psychologist and literacy expert, is a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories and creator of the famous Reading Rope. She served as Associate Editor of the journal Annals of Dyslexia from 1994 until 2002. She also continues to serve on the Council of Advisors to the International Dyslexia Association. Dr. Scarborough was the first recipient of AIM Institute’s Hollis Scarborough Award, named in her honor, in 2019. When AIM developed its first AIM Pathways online training course, Dr. Scarborough provided input and approval on a video animation explaining her widely recognized Reading Rope.

Dr. Washington directs the UCI Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub and is Director of the Dialect, Poverty and Academic Success Lab at UCI. Currently, Dr. Washington’s research is focused on the intersection of literacy, language variation, and poverty. In particular, the focus of her work is understanding the role of cultural dialect in assessment of language competence and on identification of reading disabilities in school-aged African American children and on disentangling the relationship between language production and comprehension on development of reading and early language skills for children growing up in poverty. She delivered the Norman Geschwind Memorial Lecture at the International Dyslexia Association's 2021 Annual Reading, Literacy, and Literature Conference.

Barbara Wilson is the co-founder of the Wilson Reading System^®. She contributes her professional skills to a number of reading and dyslexia-related organizations and initiatives. Barbara also developed and oversees graduate courses and clinical practicums that lead to Wilson^® Dyslexia Practitioner and Therapist certifications. She is the 2022 recipient of the International Dyslexia Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. AIM is a Wilson^® Accredited Partner school and provides Wilson instruction to students at AIM Academy as well as provides training to educators across the country. 

Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, teacher, and advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA and the former John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. She has authored over 170 scientific publications; Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (15 translations; HarperCollins, 2007); Tales of Literacy for the 21^st Century (Oxford University Press, 2016); and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital Culture (12 translations; HarperCollins, 2018). She is co-author with Martha Denckla of the RAN/RAS naming speed tests, a universal predictor of dyslexia, and the creator of the RAVE-O Intervention Program for all struggling readers. She has received multiple awards for her contributions to the neuroscience of reading; the major awards from the International Dyslexia Association and the Einstein Award from the Dyslexia Foundation for her dyslexia research; and the Walter Ong Award and the Alfred Korzybski Award for her work on the effects of different mediums on the intellectual development of the species. Most recently, she was elected a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of Science. 

Dr. Jason Yeatman is the director of the Brain Development and Education Lab at Stanford University. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at Stanford where he studied the neurobiology of literacy and developed new brain imaging methods for studying the relationship between brain plasticity and learning The overarching goal of his current research is to understand the mechanisms that underlie the process of learning to read, how these mechanisms differ in children with dyslexia, and to design literacy intervention programs that are effective across the wide spectrum of learning differences. His lab employs a collection of structural and functional neuroimaging measurements to study how a child’s experience with reading instruction shapes the development of brain circuits that are specialized for this unique cognitive function. AIM Academy joined Dr. Yeatman’s research and development of the “Rapid Online Assessment of Reading”, or ROAR, in the 2022-2023 school year.