CRECE researcher and Career Development Faculty Dr. Emily Zimmerman has been featured in Northeastern University’s “Vital Signs” magazine, which is published by the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. The piece, “Binkies Do More Than Pacify,” delved into Zimmerman’s innovative work on preterm infant development as well as into her personal journey into developing her research interests.
Zimmerman has developed a non-nutritive suck device that quantitatively tests suck patterns in infants. This information is a key indicator of infant neural development, and the ultimate goal is to use this data to develop intervention processes to improve outcomes for babies born prematurely. The non-nutritive suck device is being used as part of CRECE’s research, which investigates in utero air pollutant exposures alongside postnatal exposures and developmental delays in infants born in Puerto Rico.
Read the full summer of 2017 issue of Vital Signs here.