Staff

Shilpa Hanumantha

Post Doctoral Fellow
Gallaudet University

Dr. Shilpa Hanumantha, who hails from Bangalore, India; moved to the United States in 1982 at the young age of six. A year later, she was introduced to Cued English through the connections made in her home area of Northern Virginia. After learning the language of English through cues, Dr. Hanumantha later picked up ASL from deaf friends. Upon graduation from high school, Dr. Hanumantha attended George Mason University (GMU) and received a Bachelor’s degree in Biology. While studying for a medical school entrance exam in her final year at GMU, Dr. Hanumantha realized that despite earlier aspirations of pursuing a career in pediatrics, medical school was not for her. Instead, she chose the field of psychology. In October of this year, Dr. Hanumantha defended her doctoral dissertation Performance Comparisons of Deaf and Hearing Adults on the Wechsler Memory Scale, Third Edition Subtests: Faces I, II in the Clinical Psychology Department at Gallaudet University. Dr. Hanumantha’s study examined whether or not the results from deaf participants who were administered the Faces I and II subtests using instructions translated into ASL (instead of Signed English, which follows English word order) would be equivalent to the results of matched hearing participants who received instructions in spoken English. In contrast to an earlier study, the results indicated that the deaf participants performed equally well under either Signed English or ASL conditions.
Dr. Hanumantha co-presented Advocacy Skills for Psychologists in Deafness: Enhancing Opportunities for Psychologists and Trainees at a conference as well as a related piece at a second conference. Additionally, for six months in 2005, she worked as a research assistant for the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, collecting information and preparing research drafts. In August 2007, she completed her clinical psychology internship at the Deaf Wellness Center, a program of the University of Rochester Medical Center, based in its Department of Psychiatry in Rochester, N.Y. Furthermore, externships were completed at Gallaudet University’s Mental Health Center, the Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, D.C., and the Virginia Treatment Center for Children (VTCC) in Richmond, VA. In recognition of her accomplishments, Dr. Hanumantha has received multiple scholarship awards to pursue her graduate studies while at Gallaudet University. In addition to her academic accomplishments, she served as an officer for several non-profit organizations within the Deaf community.

Currently as a post-doctoral fellow for Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2), Dr. Hanumantha is involved with two different projects; a study assessing both poor and proficient readers in the US, Germany, and Israel as well as the VL2 toolkit psychometric study. These studies will help researchers, worldwide, to learn how to conduct assessments effectively with deaf and hard of hearing indiviudals. Based on her experience with her own dissertation process, Dr. Hanumantha has not only developed an interest in psychometric test administration of deaf and hard of hearing adults, but she has also developed an interest in cross-cultural comparison studies.

In the first two months of her new job at Gallaudet University, Dr. Hanumantha enjoys on-the-job perks such as the new iMac computer in her office. Often, she finds that she has to discipline herself not to get lost in all of the different applications that are available on the computer. As of now, her bookshelf remains empty, but she plans to rectify that soon! She also enjoys working with the team at VL2, especially through the webcam – which allows her to connect with colleagues that are both near and far. With that being said, Dr. Hanumantha is looking forward to all that VL2 has to offer, not only for herself, but also for her colleagues and the academic community at large. Hopefully, working at VL2 will help Dr. Hanumantha obtain a permanent research position as a professor or researcher at a university.

When not reading psychology journals, photo-blogging, traveling to new places or discussing random thoughts via cues or signs with her sister, Dr. Hanumantha can be found around the Metro Area (VA, DC, MD) in search of new wardrobe items, good ethnic ‘spicy’ meals, and quality time with friends.

The is material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number SBE-0541953. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.