Janice C. Light

Janice C. Light, Ph.D., is an American speech-language researcher and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Pennsylvania State University, where she was the inaugural Hintz Family Endowed Chair in Children’s Communicative Competence. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1990 and has developed an internationally recognized research program in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) focused on communication outcomes and quality of life for children and adults with complex communication needs, including those with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other developmental disabilities.

Light has served as principal investigator on more than 20 federally funded research grants and leads the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (RERC on AAC), a national research consortium supported by the U.S. National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. She is the author of over 80 peer‑reviewed articles, chapters, and books, and is coauthor of Augmentative & Alternative Communication: Supporting Children and Adults with Complex Communication Needs, now in its fifth edition, with David R. Beukelman. Her contributions to AAC have been recognized with honors such as the Don Johnston Distinguished Lecturer award from the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication and the Dorothy Jones Barnes Outstanding Teaching Award at Penn State.[