Mabel L. Rice

Mabel L. Rice is the Fred & Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies at the University of Kansas, holding a PhD in her field. She directs the Merrill Advanced Studies Center, the Child Language Doctoral Program, and the NIDCD-funded Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences of Communication Disorders (P30 DC005803). Her roles include Principal Investigator (PI) on multiple NIH-funded studies and Partner Investigator for Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. Additionally, she oversees a NIDCD training grant (T32 DC000052) and has served as Chair of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Journals Board (2015–2019).

Her research is multidisciplinary and involves international collaboration, with ongoing studies in the Midwest and Western Australia. Key collaborators include scholars from Nebraska, New York, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, and Washington University. Dr. Rice focuses on language acquisition, morphosyntax, genetic bases of language impairments, and their implications in conditions like HIV, autism, and twin studies.

• Research Highlights: Genetic studies of SLI/NLI, epidemiological twin studies, diagnostic boundaries in language disorders, and cross-disciplinary neuroscience-cognition collaborations.
• Teaching: Directs the Child Language Doctoral Program (jointly with Applied Behavioral Sciences, Linguistics, Psychology, and Speech-Language-Hearing departments) and teaches graduate courses on language acquisition, research methods, and clinical issues.

She has received prestigious awards, including Fellowships from AAAS, APA, APS, ASHA, and the John C. Wright Mentorship Award. Her service roles include membership in NIH workshops, the DSM-V Neurodevelopmental Disorders Work Group, and editorial boards. She also contributed to the NIH Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) and Autism Speaks Treatment Advisory Board.