Dr. Joseph S. Perkell is a research affiliate in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the S.B. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962, the D.M.D. from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 1967, and the Ph.D. from MIT in 1974 in Speech Communication. He joined the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in 1964. In 1980 he was appointed Principal Research Scientist. In 1989, he was promoted to Senior Research Scientist in RLE and the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. In 1997, he was appointed Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University.
Dr. Perkell and his colleagues are conducting a series of experiments to explore the control and coordination of speech articulatory movements. A system for electromagnetic midsagittal articulometry has been developed and is used to characterize the various articulator motions under study. Dr. Perkell also collaborates with other scientists to study the influence of hearing on the speech production of cochlear implant patients and on mechanisms underlying certain kinds of voice disorders.
