JAAA Editorial and Contact Information

Dr. Piker is the program director of audiology, director of the Vestibular Sciences Lab and an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Previously, she served as the Director of Auditory and Vestibular Research at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Before becoming Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, she served for five years as the journal’s assistant editor for continuing education.

Dr. Piker’s research interests focus on vestibular physiology and vestibular clinical diagnostics. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in vestibular sciences, auditory and vestibular anatomy and physiology, and auditory and vestibular pathologies.

She has mentored PhD students, AuD students, undergraduates and medical residents in vestibular research and the clinical care of dizzy patients. Although Dr. Piker enjoys teaching in the classroom, the vestibular science lab is her favorite place to teach and work one-on-one with students.

She received the American Academy of Audiology Early Career Audiologist award in 2019 and the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology Editor’s Award in 2014. She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on the vestibular sciences and given more than 80 presentations.

Dr. Piker serves on the Board of Directors for the Vestibular Disorders Association and served four years as a board member of the Virginia Board of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology.

She earned a PhD and AuD at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a BS at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

James Jerger, PhD, was the founder of the American Academy of Audiology, a former associate professor in the audiology program of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, professor of  audiology at the Baylor College of Medicine, and former emeritus distinguished scholar-in-residence in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences of The University of Texas at Dallas.

Following the completion of his PhD degree in audiology at Northwestern University in 1954, Dr. Jerger served for seven years as an audiology faculty member at Northwestern. After a two-year period at Gallaudet College in Washington, DC, he worked as the director of research at the Houston Speech and Hearing Center. In 1968, he joined the faculty of the Department of Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. There, he directed the Audiology and Speech Pathology services of the Methodist Hospital. Dr. Jerger joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in 1997.

Dr. Jerger’s research interests focus on auditory processing disorders in both children and elderly persons. He established the Texas Auditory Processing Disorder Laboratory at UTD.

He served as Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology (JAAA) from its inception in 1989 until 2011. From 1963 to 1970, Dr. Jerger served as the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (JSHR). He was the author or coauthor of more than 300 publications in audiology. Dr. Jerger served as the first president of the American Academy of Audiology in 1989.