Rachel Romeo (SHBT)

An Articulate Exploration

Rachel Romeo has been fascinated by the brain ever since she can remember. “It’s the essence of who we are as humans,” she says. “Its plasticity throughout the lifespan is what permits us to learn and change.”

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, Romeo was introduced to brain science during a high school course in psychology, but she credits “a chance course in cognitive science” at the University of Pennsylvania with sparking her interest in linguistics. “Language is this uniquely human and infinitely generative symbolic system that allows us to fulfill this deeply-seated desire for communication,” she shares.

At Penn, Romeo researched language acquisition, specifically how infants’ brains convert acoustic information into meaningful phonemes and words. Curious about the language acquisition from a clinical perspective, Romeo went on to earn an MSc in Language Sciences at University College London. “I wanted to learn more about atypical language development and language disorders, as well as individual differences in speech production and perception,” she explains.

After her master’s degree, Romeo knew she wanted to further her study of cognitive neuroscience, but without losing a “real life” clinical perspective. At Harvard, she is focusing on the effects of the environment on the brain, and how this influences the neurocognitive basis of language, while at the same time developing her clinical skills.

Now a G4 in the Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT), Romeo has already earned her Clinical Certificate in Speech-Language Pathology, the qualifying credential to practice speech pathology. This certificate combined with a PhD will allow her to integrate clinical practice with research.