Kirrie J Ballard

Professor Ballard completed her undergraduate degree at University of Queensland in 1983 and worked primarily as a paediatric speech pathologist in Queensland and New South Wales until moving to the USA in 1992. She completed a Master of Arts in Speech-Language Pathology (1994) and PhD (1997) at Northwestern University in Illinois and went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Voice and Speech at University of Iowa.Professor Ballard has held academic positions in the Speech Pathology departments of Indiana University and the University of Iowa.

Since 2006,Professor Ballard has been at the University of Sydney where she served as Head of Speech Pathology and Director of the Graduate Entry Masters program until July 2012.She has recently taken up a four-year research fellowship.Professor Ballard has published on diagnostic approaches and procedures for acquired and childhood speech and language disorders (particularly apraxia of speech) and on application of the principles of motor learning framework to treatment of motor speech disorders in adults and children.

Professor Ballard's research has attracted funding from the National Institutes of Health in the USA and the NH&MRC and ARC in Australia as well as professional groups such as the American Speech Language and Hearing Association and the Motor Neurone Disease Research Institute of Australia.