My interest in medicine and language is inherent to diagnostic questions in human voice disorders, and focuses on how to differentiate normal physiologic from pathologic acoustic voice deviation. In a clinical context, acoustic analysis techniques are used to objectively describe voice sound deviation (i.e. dysphonia), to supplement diagnosis and to describe treatment outcomes. Similar techniques are also widely applied to describe differences between languages and dialects, in speaker identification, or in tracking of status in patients with psychiatric diseases. My research focuses on behavioral, linguistic and physiological influencing factors, and on how to improve the clinical application of acoustic measurements.

Moreover, my work focuses on adapting and validating symptom specific questionnaires for voice and swallowing disorders in German language. Both research areas are multidisciplinary in nature, involving collaborative work with specialists from medicine, biomedical sciences, medical physics, linguistics, psychology and special pedagogics.