Justin Kueser, Ph.D., will receive the 2026 Early Career Contributions in Research Award from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) at the ASHA Convention in November. Dr. Kueser is the director of the Emerging Language Knowledge (ELK) Lab at Boys Town National Research Hospital.
This award acknowledges significant scientific accomplishments by individuals beyond the dissertation and within five years of receiving their doctoral or other terminal degree or completion of post-doctoral training.
“It’s nice to receive confirmation that the work that I'm doing is important and that it's advancing our knowledge about different aspects of developmental language disorder and late talking,” Dr. Kueser said. “Hopefully it will have an impact on these children and their development.”
Ryan McCreery, Ph.D., Vice President of Research at Boys Town Hospital, called Dr. Kueser an outstanding scientist. “We could not be happier that he is part of our research program. He is incredibly deserving of this recognition, which is the highest form of recognition that an early-career scientist can receive from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,” Dr. McCreery said.
At the ELK Lab, Dr. Kueser’s research focuses on understanding why late talkers and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulty learning language by studying how children learn words and comprehend sentences.
“Dr. Kueser’s impact on the field of late talking and developmental language disorder is already significant as an early career researcher,” said Krystal Werfel, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Senior Director of Research at Boys Town. “His clinical experience combined with research and theoretical training results in science that is rigorous and immediately impactful. I am excited to watch how his work changes the way we care for children with language difficulties as he advances in his career.”
A certified speech-language pathologist, Dr. Kueser received an undergraduate degree in linguistics and a master’s in communication disorders before earning his Ph.D. and conducting post-doctoral research in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at Purdue University.
“I'm excited to continue the two main areas of my work: understanding how we can help support late talkers and their caregivers in navigating the medical system; and my psycholinguistic and intervention research, where we want to learn what makes word learning and language comprehension difficult for children with DLD,” Dr. Kueser said.
In addition to the support and mentorship he received during his training, Dr. Kueser cited Boys Town’s strong culture of support for research as being essential to the work that happens in labs like his.
“We have a lot of researchers at Boys Town with tremendous experience who are doing excellent science and who provide mentorship for those of us, including myself, who are just beginning our careers,” he said. “I think that’s really given me the foundation for doing the work that I'm doing right now.”