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COMPASS Lab

Communication, Optimization, Multilingualism, Patient Education, AI & Speech Science

The COMPASS Lab is a human-centered research and clinical innovation lab dedicated to advancing communication, learning, connection, and quality of life for individuals and families across diverse communities.

Grounded in the values of compassion, evidence-based practice, cultural responsiveness, and interdisciplinary collaboration, COMPASS Lab explores how research, education, technology, and clinical science can work together to support meaningful communication outcomes across the lifespan.

Led by the collective expertise of Dr. Kim Sabourin, Dr. Isabelle Barrière, Dr. Siena Sun, and Dr. Mengyang Qiu, the lab integrates perspectives from speech-language pathology, multilingualism, cognitive and language sciences, speech sciences, clinical education, and AI-supported innovation.

Faculty strengths include bilingual and multilingual communication, stuttering and other fluency disorders, language and literacy development, clinical pedagogy, communication sciences research, and emerging applications of artificial intelligence in education and healthcare.

At COMPASS Lab, we believe communication is more than a clinical skill—it is a pathway to connection, participation, identity, and opportunity!

Research Areas

• Multilingualism, Bilingualism & Cultural Responsiveness led by Dr. Isabelle Barriere
  
• Stuttering and Other Fluency Disorders led by Dr. Kim Sabourin
  
• AI, Education & Clinical Innovation led by Dr. Mengyang Qiu and Dr. Siena Sun
  
• Feeding & Swallowing Practice led by Dr. Siena Sun
  
• Speech Sound Disorder led by Dr. Siena Sun
  
• Cognitive and Language Sciences led by Dr. Mengyang Qiu
  
• Natural Language Processing in Language Disorders led by Dr. Mengyang Qiu
  
• Family-Centered Care, Mentorship & Translational Research led by Dr. Kim Sabourin, Dr. Siena Sun and Dr. Mengyang Qiu
  

Recent Publications

• Barrière, I., Nissenbaum, J., & Lafontant, M. (2026). . Perspectives on Undergraduate Research & Mentoring, 14(2), 1–12.
• Lakshmanan, U., & Barrière, I. (2026). . Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 20, 1964936.
• Manes, J. L., Rohl, A. H., Qiu, M., Stipancic, K. L., Corcos, D. M., Patterson, C. G., Greenlee, J. D. W., & Tjaden, K. (2026). . American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 35(5), 2243-2261.
• Qiu, M., Brisebois, Z., & Sun, S. (2026). . Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics, 250–263.

Recent Presentations

Underlined names indicate students from our program.

• NassrElgrgawi, S. (2026). Is AI ready for SLP? [Poster presentation]. ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ Interdisciplinary Research Symposium, Morristown, NJ, United States.
  
• Qiu, M., Sun, S., & NassrElgrgawi, S. (2026). Bridging disciplines in AI for aphasia research: A network analysis of publication abstracts across CS and non-CS venues [Poster presentation]. 55th Clinical Aphasiology Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
• Sun, S., Qiu, M., & NassrElgrgawi, S. (2026). How is AI being used across communication disorders? A review of the research [Oral presentation]. Annual Convention of the New Jersey Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Iselin, NJ, United States.
  

Contact Information

COMPASS Lab: slpresearch@steu.edu
Dr. Kim Sabourin: ksabourin@steu.edu
Dr. Isabelle Barriere: ibarriere@steu.edu
Dr. Siena Sun: ssun@steu.edu
Dr. Mengyang Qiu: mqiu@steu.edu