Vice President for Research and Economic Development

Peter Alfonso, Ph.D., is the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University of Rhode Island. In previous research administration positions, he served as the Vice President for Research at the University of North Dakota, Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Tennessee and as Associate Provost for Research, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. From 1991-99 Dr. Alfonso was the Professor and Head of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and from 1977-91 served as research scientist at the Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut and as assistant professor, associate professor, and professor of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at the University of Connecticut.

He has held a number of adjunct research and academic appointments in the U.S. and abroad. Since taking his Ph.D. in Speech Science and Experimental Phonetics from Purdue University in 1977, he has been awarded over $20M in federal research awards, and has published over 130 book chapters, articles, and abstracts in speech acoustics, perception, and speech physiology, particularly in the areas of speech motor control in normal and speech disordered populations. Dr. Alfonso is a 1990 Fulbright Research Scholar to The Netherlands, a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and a Fellow of the American Council on Education.