Emily Zimmerman is an associate professor and associate chair for research and innovation in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. She also serves as affiliated faculty at the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and the College of Engineering.

Her research focuses on the link between early sucking, feeding, and infant vocalizations through an array of objective, customized sensors and technologies. Zimmerman studies the environmental, maternal, physiological, and genetic influences of such behaviors across patient populations and cultures. Using insights from these studies, she creates novel therapeutic paradigms designed to enhance these early oro-motor behaviors with the overarching goal of improving subsequent neurodevelopment.

Among numerous awards, Zimmerman has earned the Northeastern University Bouvé Kenerson Faculty Award, the Children’s Environmental Health Center Travel Scholarship from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Advancing Academic Research Career Award. She was also named ADInstruments’ Science Hero.

Before joining Northeastern, Zimmerman worked in research in neonatal intensive care units to improve short and long-term outcomes for premature infants. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in newborn medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School after earning doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Kansas.