Georgia Malandraki, PhD, CCC-SLP, BCS-S

Research Interest / Training Areas:

• Swallowing Physiology and Swallowing Disorders
• Developmental and Treatment Neuroplasticity
• Telehealth – Telepractice

Biography:

Georgia A. Malandraki, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, BCS-S is an Associate Professor at the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences with a courtesy appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University and a Board Certified Specialist in Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders. She earned her bachelor's degree in Speech and Language Therapy in Patras, Greece and her master's in Speech and Language Pathology at Ohio University. She then completed her doctorate in Speech and Hearing Science with a focus in Swallowing Disorders and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and pursued a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Medicine of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The primary aim of Dr. Malandraki’s research is to uncover the central and peripheral neural mechanisms of swallowing function, in an effort to inform clinical decisions and develop neurophysiologically-driven treatments for children and adults with neurogenic dysphagia. Dr. Malandraki is also one of the pioneers in the area of dysphagia telehealth, leading the effort to establish evidence-based teledynamic diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the rehabilitation of dysphagia in underserved populations. Finally, she is an active advocate for the field of dysphagia in her home country, Greece, where she leads the effort to collect the first epidemiological data for dysphagia and to improve training and rehabilitation for swallowing disorders. Her work has been continuously funded by the NIH (NIBIB and NIDCD), the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine, and by several mechanisms supported by the Purdue Research Foundation. To learn more about Dr. Malandraki's work, please visit her lab website: https://www.purdue.edu/i-eatlab

Selected Publications:

• Kantarcigil, C., Kim, M. K., Chang, T. Smith, A., Craig, B., Lee, C.H., & Malandraki, G.A. (in press). Validation of a novel ultra-thin wearable electromyography sensor patch for monitoring submental muscle activity during swallowing. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research. 

• Kim, M. K., Kantarcigil, C., Kim B., Kumar Baruah, R., Maity, S., Park, Y., Kim, K., Lee, S., Bauer Malandraki, J., Avlani, S., Smith, A., Sen, S, Alam, M.A., Malandraki, GA, & Lee, CH (2019). Skin-mountable submental sensor patch with remote monitoring controls for management of oropharyngeal swallowing disorders. Science Advances, 5(12), eaay3210. 

• Mourao, L.F., Friel, K., Sheppard, J.J., Kuo, H.S., Luchesi, K., Gordon, A.M., & Malandraki, G.A. (2017). The role of the corpus callosum in pediatric dysphagia: preliminary findings from a Diffusion Tensor Imaging study in children with unilateral spastic cerebral palsy. Dysphagia, 32(5), 703-713. 

• Malandraki, G.A., Rajappa, A., Kantarcigil, C., Wagner, E., Ivey, C., & Youse, K. (2016). The Intensive Dysphagia Rehabilitation (IDR) approach for neurogenic dysphagia: A Case-Series Design Study. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 97, 567-574.

• Malandraki, G.A., Sutton, B.P., Perlman, A.L., Karampinos, D.C., & Conway, C. (2009). Neural activation of swallowing and swallowing-related tasks in healthy young adults: An attempt to separate the components of deglutition. Human Brain Mapping, 30(10), 320