Faculty Profile for Dr. Pradeep Ramanathan

Biography Section

Biography and Education

B. A. Physics Dec 1987
Department of Physics
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

M. S. Physics May 1996
Department of Physics and Astronomy
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA

M. A. Speech-Language Pathology May 2002
Department of Communication Disorders
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
M.A. Advisor: Dr. Nancy Pearl Solomon

Ph.D. Speech-Language Pathology July 2009
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Mary R. T. Kennedy
Minor: Cognitive and Biological Psychology:
Department of Psychology
Advisor: Dr. Chad J. Marsolek

Teaching Interests

I teach whatever courses in my dept. are in need of coverage and for which I have appropriate training. Please see "notable courses" below for a list of these.

Beyond subject matter, I am interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning, primarily as a consumer so to speak. Because of my own research interests in learning and memory in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI), I am already familiar with study and learning strategies in that population. However, I also like to dig through the research on what facilitates learning in neurotypical college students. In the first two lectures of the semester in my junior level undergraduate courses, I present a summary of this literature to the students and encourage them to utilize those study and learning strategies that have strong evidence (e.g., spaced learning and retrieval, creating one's own practice tests, etc.).

I am also interested in value-added metrics of pedagogical effectiveness, though I have not yet formally included any such approaches - only ad hoc for some classes.

Research Interests

Over the next 10 years, I have the following aims:

Focus area 1: Aphasia Research:
Learn and master the application of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) methods and analyses in studying treatment-induced neuroplasticity in aphasia. This will involve publishing a series of manuscripts which, together, describe investigations of the behavioral and neural effects of hemisphere-targeted training (which I call “Constrained Hemisphere Aphasia Therapy", CHAT) for individuals with post-stroke aphasia, as a function of: 1) Lesion locus, size, extent, 2) aphasia syndrome classification, 3) impairment severity, and 4) time post onset.

Focus area 2: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Research:
Develop a clinical research infrastructure investigating the intervention efficacy, effectiveness, and neural consequences of evidence-based cognitive rehabilitation treatments (CRT) for individuals at least one year post moderate to severe TBI. This will involve publishing manuscripts (whether of new research or systematic reviews/meta-analyses of extant research) which demonstrate the effectiveness of CRT in chronic moderate or severe TBI. Eventually, I intend to present these findings to insurers and/or congressional representatives, providing compelling evidence that CRT after one year post TBI is sufficiently effective (in terms of disability-reduction and cost-effectiveness) to merit health care coverage of CRT beyond one year post injury.

I also plan to conduct basic science research: Study neurovascular coupling using combined ERP/fNIRS to investigate and constrain theories on the neural substrates and cognitive mechanisms underlying Judgments of Learning using combined ERP/fNIRS

Finally, I aim to acquire and maintain extramural funding streams sufficient to meet the needs of my research lab (including funding for post-docs, students, equipment & materials, etc.).