Carolina Leal is an audiologist with 18+ years’ experience across many UK leading teaching hospitals in the field of Audiology. Having worked at every stage in the audiological care pathway, Carolina gained extensive knowledge of both diagnostic and rehabilitation specialisms within audiology, as well as extensive experience with both paediatric and adult populations.
Carolina has also worked in high education as a Senior Teaching Fellow in Audiology. She is a Senior Fellow of the British Society of Audiology (SFBSA) and a Senior Fellow of the High Education Academy (SFHEA).
With both her clinical and academic experience, Carolina is now completing her PhD at the SoundLab and she is interested in how children with cochlear implants process sounds to understand how specific aspects of their auditory processing abilities influence their listening and spoken language outcomes.
She is currently trialling a paediatric adaptation of the STRIPES test. The STRIPES (Spectro-Temporal Ripple for Investigating Processor EffectivenesS) test is a spectro-temporal discrimination test designed to investigate CI listeners’ spectro-temporal resolution, while minimizing other cues introduced by the CI processor that could be used to perform the task. Carolina hopes to translate her research into clinical practice as she understands firsthand the limitations of testing children in a clinical setup.