Rate My Professor Brooke-Mai Whelan

Dr. Brooke-Mai Whelan is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, at the University of Queensland. She earned her Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Honours) and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland, completing her PhD in 2003 on the impact of stereotactic basal ganglia and thalamic surgery on linguistic functioning in Parkinson's disease. As a Certified Practicing Speech Pathologist, she serves as Program Director for the Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Honours) and is affiliated with the Centre for Motor Neuron Disease Research. Her career at UQ includes teaching and research supervision in speech pathology.

Whelan's research interests focus on the rehabilitation of motor speech disorders including dysarthria from stroke, Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; brain mechanisms of speech recovery; and telerehabilitation applications. She has co-authored the book Speech and language disorders associated with subcortical pathology (2009, with Bruce Murdoch) and book chapters such as 'Be clear online – a telepractice application for dysarthria rehabilitation' (2021) and 'Assessment and treatment of cognitive-linguistic disorder in Parkinson disease' (2011). Key recent publications include 'To treat or not to treat: a scoping review of speech treatment for dysarthria in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)' (2025), 'Segmentation of the human tongue musculature using MRI: Field guide and validation in motor neuron disease' (2025), 'How do we measure dysarthria after stroke? A systematic review to guide the core outcome set for dysarthria' (2025), and 'Towards a core outcome set for dysarthria after stroke: What should we measure?' (2024). She leads the Save our Speech Study (2023-2027), funded by the Motor Neurone Disease Research Institute of Australia, developing automated speech biomarkers for ALS. Whelan contributed as editorial lead for 'Speech-language neurophysiology and intervention' in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2024) and was recognized on UQ's Honour Roll Above and Beyond in 2020.