In our August Lunchtime Lecture, Dr. Maya Henry will describe aphasia, an acquired impairment of language caused by damage to the brain. She will discuss aphasia as a window into the neuroscience of communication and highlight innovative approaches to treatment of progressive forms of aphasia caused by brain disease.

Maya Henry, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Neurology at Dell Medical School. She is also an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of the Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab. She received her bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas at Austin and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Henry completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California's Memory and Aging Center, a leading research center that investigates atypical dementias such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Henry joined the faculty of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in 2014 and became jointly appointed in the Department of Neurology in 2019. Her clinical and research interests are in the nature and treatment of aphasia caused by stroke and neurodegenerative disease. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, her research explores cognitive and neural bases of spoken and written language, as well as the rehabilitation of language impairments associated with primary progressive aphasia. Dr. Henry has published her research in a variety of journals including but not limited to Brain, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Cortex, Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, Aphasiology, Brain and Language, Clinical Interventions in Aging, Neurocase, Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, and Current Opinion in Neurology.

In 2022, Congress enacted the Inflation Reduction Act to “accelerate the transition to clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” An inadvertent consequence of that act was to give rise to the misconception that traditional sources of energy would be substantially diminished if not eliminated.

Analyses conducted by public and private institutions tasked with forecasting energy sources to mid-century show that solar and wind renewables may rise to provide 25% of 2050 global energy needs, whereas the historical sources of energy—oil and natural gas based on fossil fuels—will continue to deliver 50% of energy consumption in the mid-21st century. In our September Lunchtime Lecture, Dr. Ehud I. Ronn will explore the forecasts of energy sources into the mid-century and briefly lay out the policy implications of these forecasts in terms of ensuring stability and reliability of energy sources.

Ehud I. Ronn has been a professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business at TheUniversity of Texas at Austin, since 1988. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1983.

In addition to teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Ronn has held visiting appointments at academic institutions in the U. S., Europe and the Far East. He has published articles on investments, interest rate instruments and energy derivatives in academic and practitioner literature.

Dr. Ronn’s addtional teachings include professional programs and intensives on topics ranging from the social role of finance to investments and energy finance for professional MBAs.

From 1991–1993, Dr. Ronn served as Vice President, Trading Research Group at Merrill Lynch & Co. He was the founding director of the University of Texas Center for Energy Finance from 1997–2009, and the commodity market modeling practice area manager at Morgan Stanley & Co from 2010–2011.

In Nov. 2004, Dr. Ronn was selected by Energy Risk to the “Energy Risk Hall of Fame.”

The connections between people and spaces they occupy are pervasive and powerful. In our November Lunchtime Lecture, Dr. Samuel D. Gosling will examine how people manipulate and select their environments to reflect and express their attitudes, values, traits, and emotions—from the rooms in our houses to larger-scale spaces such as neighborhoods, cities, and geographic regions.

Sam Gosling is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin. He did his doctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley, where his dissertation focused on personality in spotted hyenas. His current research focuses on the psychology of physical space, how personality is expressed in everyday contexts in daily life, and on new methods for collecting data in the behavioral sciences. His approach is ecological, emphasizing the importance of studying individuals in the contexts of their natural habitats.

He is an elected fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution, the Carol and Ed Diener Award in Personality Psychology, and SPSP’s award for methodological innovation. His book “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You” is based on the idea that we deliberately and inadvertently express our personalities in the environments in which we live and work. Clarivate have identified him as one of the most highly cited scientists in the world.

To learn about his current research, please see his lab website.