Brett Welch

Hello! My name is Brett Welch and I am a clinical voice therapist and PhD Candidate in Communication Science & Disorders (CSD) at the University of Pittsburgh. Clinically, I specialize in working with the psychological aspects of voice and voice disorders – identity, personality, and trauma routinely come up in my sessions. My line of research stems directly from this clinical background. Broadly, I am interested at the intersections of CSD and Psychology. My line of research seeks to examine the psychological factors relevant to voice and communication disorders, but also how one's voice and communication behaviors influence their psycho-social well-being. To interrogate these relationships, I leverage contemporary analytic methods used in quantitative psychology. My dissertation project seeks to integrate contemporary theories and methods used in Psychology to advance our understanding of chronic vocal hyperfunction. My current career goals are to complete a post-doctoral training fellowship to gain more experience and expand upon my knowledge with longitudinal ambulatory study design and data analyses. With these skills, I seek to become tenure-track professor and continue to research these psycho-social-vocal relationships with well-designed longitudinal studies. 

I have gained many data analytic skills during my PhD. I have become extremely proficient using R to clean, organize, and analyze data for projects. I have also taken courses in computer science and have a working proficiency with SQL and Python. For structural equation modeling (SEM), I primarily use lavaan, though I will begin using Mplus in the near future. I have spent a substantial amount of time over the last two years taking additional courses and trainings on quantitative methods. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoy mentoring and teaching students, and presenting research findings at conferences.