Gurevich honored with PFW Outstanding Research Award

Naomi Gurevich, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has been honored as the 2025–26 recipient of the Outstanding Research Award at Purdue University Fort Wayne. She was honored during a ceremony Friday in the IDEASpace at Helmke Library.

Presented since 1999, the Outstanding Research Award honors a tenured, full-time faculty member for outstanding performance in the area of research, scholarly activity, or creative endeavor. The honoree must have achieved an exceptional record of contributions to the body of knowledge or creative works in his or her discipline—and must also have had great success communicating that information to a wide audience.

Gurevich was chosen for the honor by the ORA committee, which consisted of past recipients and her peers. The award is sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs.

“The Office of Academic Affairs is proud to present Dr. Naomi Gurevich with the 2025–26 Purdue Fort Wayne Outstanding Research Award, recognizing her exceptional contributions in the field of communication sciences and disorders,” said Connie Kracher, associate vice chancellor for research. “Specifically, Dr. Gurevich's research is in theoretical phonology, the branch of linguistics concerned with sound patterns in languages. Professor Gurevich's empirical research studies continue to advance the understanding of various speech sounds to functional intelligibility, impacting the clinical assessment and treatment of speech disorders.”

Since joining the PFW faculty in 2017, Gurevich has received numerous accolades in recognition of her research, teaching, and service contributions. These include the CELT Excellence in Online or Hybrid Teaching Award in 2019, the Sigma Xi College Science Teacher of the Year Award in 2021, the Pippert Science Research Scholar Award in 2022, the PFW Featured Faculty for Excellence in Research Award in 2024, and the Purdue Focus Award for outstanding contribution to the furthering of Purdue’s commitment to disability accessibility and the pursuit of excellence in 2025.

“This is a well-deserved recognition for Dr. Naomi Gurevich, and we couldn’t be more thrilled for her,” said Shannon Bischoff, chair of the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders. “More importantly, it speaks volumes about the caliber of her work and the meaningful contributions she brings to our department, college, and campus community. We’re incredibly fortunate to have Naomi working hands-on with our students in her lab on the very research that earned her this honor.”

Gurevich’s clinical linguistics and acquired disorders lab, located in Science Building, Room G67, is currently working on two main projects, “Phonological aspects of intelligibility” and “The linguistics and impact of accentedness.”

Gurevich developed the Functional Importance to Intelligibility framework. One of FITI’s applications is a clinically actionable hierarchy for assessing and treating individuals with intelligibility difficulties brought on by motor speech disorders. Validating this framework experimentally is, in turn, leading to advances in understanding the relative contribution of speaker, listener, and language to the speech chain. That work has been presented during top research events for communication sciences and disorders, acoustics, and linguistics.

FITI has gained national recognition, and Gurevich’s research productivity has ranked at the top of several platforms tracking research in her discipline. She regularly gets requests from other researchers and clinicians to share the FITI resources she developed.

Gurevich engages in numerous interdisciplinary collaborations both at PFW and globally. Her commitment to student mentorship is integrated into her work and she has supervised 29 undergraduate research projects, many of which led to peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and snapshots in the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, or JPUR.