Dr. Christine Yoshinaga-Itano is a Professor Emerita of the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences and is currently a Research Professor, in the Institute of Cognitive Science, faculty in the Center for Neurosciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, adjunct faculty in the Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology at the University of Colorado, Denver, Visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, Centre for Deaf Studies and an international doctoral faculty board member in the Department of Human Sciences, Psychology area, at the University of Verona. She developed the Marion Downs Center in 1996 and received funding from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Maternal & Child Health, the Office of Special Education, Office of Education and National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research since the early 1980s.
Dr. Yoshinaga-Itano has assisted state departments of public health and education, schools for the deaf, and early intervention programs throughout the United States and its territories. In addition, she has served as a consultant for many countries who have developed early hearing detection and intervention programs. Her research has focused on the predictors of language (semantics, syntax, pragmatics and phonology), social-emotional, cognitive and auditory skill outcomes of infants and children who are deaf or hard of hearing, including those with both bilateral and unilateral hearing losses, those with and without additional disabilities, children with autism and other developmental disabilities and children from both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking homes.