Academy of Aphasia 60th Annual Meeting
October 23-25, 2022
Philadelphia, PA, USA and Virtual/Hybrid
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: MAY 27th, 2022 (11:59pm latest time zone on Earth)

The 60th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia will be held at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel (“The Notary”) in Philadelphia, PA, USA. We encourage onsite attendance, although we also offer the option to participate online via an interactive hybrid platform. Our opening night reception will be at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), the USA’s first and oldest art museum and art school. The Academy welcomes submissions of original experimental, clinical, theoretical, and historical research from any field that contributes to the study of aphasia, including Speech-Language Pathology, Psychology, Neurology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, History, and Computational Modeling.

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Dani S. Bassett (University of Pennsylvania). Dr. Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry. Their research is best-known for blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of learning, cognition, and disease in human brain networks, including work in language and aphasia. Dr. Bassett has received multiple prestigious awards, including the American Psychological Association’s ‘Rising Star’ (2012), Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow (2014), MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant (2014), Early Academic Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2015), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER (2016), Popular Science Brilliant 10 (2016), Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems Science (2017), Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science (2018), OHBM Young Investigator Award (2020), AIMBE College of Fellows (2020), American Physical Society Fellow (2021), and has been named one of Web of Science’s most Highly Cited Researchers for 3 years running. Dr. Basset is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications with over 33,000 citations, as well as a forthcoming academic trade book (Curious Minds: The Power of Connection).

Now in its fifth year, the NIDCD-funded Academy of Aphasia conference grant (R13 DC017375-01) will sponsor student fellows to attend and present their work at the conference. They will also receive focused mentoring and training from seasoned faculty mentors at the meeting. Both U.S. and international students are eligible to apply – please contact Swathi Kiran (kirans@bu.edu) with inquiries. The grant also sponsors a state-of-the-art New Frontiers in Aphasia Research seminar. This year’s topic will focus on Computational Linguistics, and the speaker will be Dr. John Hale of the University of Georgia (UGA). Dr. Hale is Arch Professor of World Languages and Cultures in the Department of Linguistics at UGA. His scientific research focuses on fundamental questions of language comprehension, investigated through cognitive modeling using computer simulations. Prior to joining UGA, Dr. Hale was a full-time research scientist at the pioneering artificial intelligence laboratory Deepmind.

Submission types and details

Presentation types:
The annual meeting includes both platform and poster sessions. Platform speakers will be required to attend onsite. All posters will be presented virtually; onsite attendees may additionally present in person.

Platform sessions (in person) include:

• Scientific papers – consisting of original research that has not yet been published.
• Symposia – consisting of a number of papers focusing on a common theme from researchers representing different laboratories. These papers may report on previously published research.
• Mini-Workshops – methodologically oriented sessions consisting of a number of papers (possibly from the same research group) reporting a unique approach to a timely topic.

Poster sessions (online and/or in person) include:

• Scientific papers that can be presented primarily in a visual format.

The Academy considers poster sessions to be as scientifically meritorious as platform sessions. Poster sessions will not conflict with platform sessions.

Guidelines for abstract content:
The submitted abstract should provide a concise statement of the problem or hypothesis, procedures and analyses conducted, results obtained, and final conclusion(s) drawn. Abstracts should conform to the provided template (in Word) and may include a maximum of 500 words (excluding references) as well as one camera-ready figure plus one table.

Symposia and Mini-Workshops:
In the case of symposia and mini-workshops, the organizer should submit an abstract summarizing the topic, including the names and affiliations of all the participants, and the titles of the other abstracts. In addition, an abstract should be submitted for each of the individual presentations. Abstracts for those individual presentations will need to indicate the symposium they are affiliated with as part of the submissions process, in the Acknowledgments. To help in the planning of the program, it is recommended that organizers of symposia and mini-workshops contact the chair of the Program Committee by e-mail (duncan1@lsu.edu) about their plans, and to receive feedback on organizational issues.

Authorship of submissions: 
More than one abstract may be submitted by an individual, but an individual can be listed as first author on only one submission. Both members and non-members of the Academy are encouraged to submit proposals for scientific papers, symposia and mini-workshops. All submissions will be given equal consideration on the basis of their scientific merit and fitness for the Academy.

Conference participation:
The meeting is open to anyone interested in attending. However, Academy of Aphasia members, authors of accepted papers, and the first authors of rejected papers will have preference if onsite or virtual space limitations restrict the number of registrants.

• American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be available free of charge for eligible conference participants, pending approval of a cooperative agreement between Temple University and the Academy of Aphasia. The number of CEUs is anticipated to be approximately 2.0 (CEUs will be updated once the program is finalized, prior to registration).
• Onsite childcare can be arranged for attendees who need it through our NIH funding support.

Submission procedures: 
Abstracts must be submitted online at tinyurl.com/aoa2022abstracts. Submission information is also available on the Academy’s website.  

Student Awards: 
This award is given to the student presenting the most scientifically meritorious paper (either platform or poster presentation). Submissions are judged by the Program Committee on the basis of the abstract submission and the conference presentation itself. All full-time graduate students are eligible for the student award, although priority is typically given to students focusing on research. Student applicants must:

• be enrolled full-time and be in good standing in a graduate program at the time of submission
• be the first author and presenter of the paper submitted
• not have received a student award from the Academy in the past

Students wishing to be considered must indicate this during the submission process.

Selection criteria for the meeting program:
Abstracts will be reviewed by the Program Committee. Selection of papers will be based on scientific merit, innovation, appropriateness for the Academy of Aphasia, and on the representation of topics in the program.

Notification regarding acceptance:
The Program Committee will email a decision no later than July 18, 2022. 

Program availability: 
PDF eBook with formatted abstracts will be available during the conference.   

Program Committee:
E. Susan Duncan (Chair), Paola Marangolo (Co-Vice Chair), Gloria Olness (Co-Vice Chair), Adrià Rofes, Tatiana Schnur, Shari Baum, Eva Kehayia, and Gabriele Miceli