Dr. Emily Plowman is a Professor at the University of Florida in the Departments of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Surgery, and Neurology. She established and directs the Aerodigestive Research Core (ARC) whose mission is to improve assessment and clinical management approaches for upper aerodigestive tract disorders impacting communication, swallowing, and breathing function via pragmatically-guided clinical research. Her current research foci are three-fold, and include: 1) increasing our understanding of governing mechanisms of both normal and disordered aerodigestive tract functions (speech, swallowing, breathing, airway clearance); 2) validation pragmatic dysphagia clinical screening tools to enable early and accurate detection of disordered function; and 3) development and evaluation of mechanistically guided therapeutic interventions.
Dr. Plowman is an internationally recognized expert in the field of dysphagia who was recently recognized by the American Board of Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders for her work in this area. She has over 70 publications and book chapters, has given over 500 lectures worldwide, and obtained over 24 grants to complete innovative research. Dr. Plowman holds current funding from the NINDS, NICHD, NIDCD, ALS Association, and Clinical and Translational Science Institute and has held consecutive National Institutes of funding since commencing her academic career in 2009.
Dr. Plowman currently serves as the UF Clinical Director for the Breathing Research and Therapeutics Center (BREATHE) and is on the Executive Committee for the Northeast ALS Consortium. Dr. Plowman is committed to improving clinical education and has developed a series of educational platforms to improve competencies of practicing Speech Language Pathologists that she has made free to practicing clinicians on her laboratory website. Dr. Plowman currently teaches graduate level courses in swallowing disorders, research methodology, and medical speech language pathology and is passionate and active in mentoring junior scientist’s in clinical research. She was awarded the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions Doctoral Mentor of the Year award in 2021 and is a finalist for the NINDS Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship. Dr. Plowman has appointments in the department of Surgery and Neurology given her active involvement in spearheading a programmatic series of quality improvement projects in the areas of clinical assessment and treatment approaches in neurodegenerative, cardiovascular surgical and Cardiothoracic patient populations.