Science Student Spotlight: Alexis Leiderman

Alexis Leiderman is a second-year clinical doctorate student in the Program in Audiology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She received her B.S. in Integrative Neuroscience at Binghamton University in May 2019 and has been recently elected to serve as the President-Elect of the National Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) for the 2021-2022 term and as President for 2022-2023. She currently serves on the 2020-2021 Board of Directors for the SAA as the Communications Committee Chair.

Alexis’s passion for audiology stems from her upbringing with her brother being a bilateral cochlear implant user. Seeing firsthand the importance and value of the profession of audiology, it became clear that this was the career she wanted to pursue. From very early on in her professional life, Alexis began shadowing several audiologists within the New York City tri-state area. She worked as an office assistant for Dr. Melissa Heche (Au.D.) at New York Speech and Hearing in Manhattan where she gained invaluable experience at a private audiology practice. To further her exposure to the field, Alexis began volunteering as an undergraduate in the Audiology and Auditory Evoked Potentials Laboratory at the CUNY Graduate Center under distinguished executive officer, researcher, and associate professor Dr. Brett Martin (Ph.D.). As a first-year student enrolled in the CUNY Audiology Program, she was a fellowship recipient for serving as a Research Assistant on an evoked potentials study examining the impact of reverberation on neurophysiologic processing in the Audiology and Auditory Evoked Potentials Laboratory.

As a doctoral student, Alexis became increasingly fascinated with research on cochlear implant users and music. Alexis has been an active flute player in the community since a young age and enjoys singing in her free time. Seeing her brother excel as a drummer was particularly astounding to her and sparked her desire to make music more enjoyable for cochlear implant users. She is now a Research Associate for the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Cochlear Implant Research Group. Under supervision from nationally recognized otolaryngologist, researcher, and Professor Anil Lalwani, M.D., Alexis has been an active member assisting with coordinating research activity and data analysis regarding speech quality and music enjoyment. She is currently a co-author on a study investigating the effect that hearing aids have on music enjoyment in individuals with hearing loss. Alexis will be completing her capstone to receive her AuD investigating the effect of talker familiarity and noise-vocoded processing familiarity on noise-vocoded speech perception in normal-hearing listeners.

Alexis will begin her third-year externship at Mt. Sinai Hospital during June of 2021 in addition to volunteering as President-Elect for the National SAA. Providing everyone the equal opportunity for hearing healthcare is of upmost importance to Alexis and she is excited to continue delegating her time volunteering and researching to better the field of audiology.