Lab announcements

Introduction

When someone says you can't do it .. do it twice, and take pictures - anonymous.

Thanks for visiting this page where we work together to capture the various facets of our team's journey to date. For posts older than 2020, please see this website.

two women, Dianna and Lauren, gesture at a poster

Dianna and Lauren present on 'both sides of the same coin' at AcademyHealth Dissemination and Implementation Science Conference

Posted on February 04, 2026

Lauren and Dianna ventured to the 18th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health to disseminate on two projects.

Journal cover, Topics in Early Childhood Special Education

CPERL Publication Alert: Early Intervention Stakeholder Perspectives of Family-Centered Care Coordination - A Pilot Study

Posted on February 04, 2026

CPERL members collaborate with colleagues from the Colorado School of Public Health to publish a pilot study in Topics in Early Childhood Special Education.

CPERL Welcomes Heri to our Team

Posted on January 15, 2026

We are excited to start the spring season through summer by welcoming a new team member to the CPERL team, Heri Ryu!

CPERL Alum Spotlight: Vera Kaelin

Posted on January 14, 2026

Alum Spotlight on Dr. Vera Kaelin, who recently joined the faculty at University of Applied Sciences in Eastern Switzerland

Image of the Occupational Team meeting for the CAIDF project

CAIDF OT Team to Present on EHR Notes Selection Protocol and Findings at ACRM

Madison Su | Posted on October 27, 2025

The Occupational Therapy (OT) team on the CAIDF project will soon step onto the national stage at ACRM conference in Chicago this week!

Two photos of lab team members on the interns' last day

CPERL Bids Farewell to Ashley and Annika

Posted on September 19, 2025

Our team bids farewell for now to our summer interns, Ashley and Annika

Lily with her poster / Annika and Lauren watching their KT video

CPERL Builds Capstone Readiness through CanChild Sponsored Contract

Posted on September 17, 2025

This summer in lab, we were funded to lean into opportunities through which we could deepen our KT contributions in ways that align with Dianna's recommendations outlined in her OTD capstone.

CPERL Welcomes PhD Students

Posted on August 06, 2025

We are excited to welcome the 2 newest CPERL members, Madison and Yebin!

Health Services Research and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Logos

CPERL Publication Alert: Family-Centered Care Coordination Improves Outcomes for Children Enrolled in Early Intervention Services

Posted on August 04, 2025

Mary Khetani and colleagues have teamed up to publish a study in Health Services Research.

CPERL Bids a Second Farewell to Dianna

Posted on July 28, 2025

Our team bids farewell to Dianna... again.

CPERL Alum Spotlight: Sabrin Rizk

Posted on July 28, 2025

Congratulations to Sabrin for receiving multiple grants, including her first federal grant!

CPERL Welcomes Ashley Huang to Our Team

Posted on June 09, 2025

We welcome Ashley Huang to join us for our CPERL Summer of Science!

purple graphic that reads Celebrate Occupational Therapy

CPERL Finds Authentic Ways to Celebrate OT Month

Posted on June 02, 2025

CPERL engages in acts of solidarity with the profession during OT Month.

Photo of Vivian, Mary, and Lily with Easterseals, CPERL, and UIC logos

CPERL Building OT Capstone Readiness

Posted on June 02, 2025

We highlight our CPERL lab member, Lilyanna (Lily), who has helped to pioneer a new pathway towards becoming a research-engaged practitioner.

CPERL Welcomes Annika Knuth

Posted on April 01, 2025

We are excited to welcome our newest member, Annika Knuth!

Valeria and our current team gathered to celebrate as part of lab retreat

Cultivating New Forms of Undergraduate Research Engagement

Posted on December 20, 2024

We reflect on new opportunity to diversify how we engage with honors undergraduates pursuing mentored research training as part of their programs of study and in ways that are mutual benefit.

cover of Physical & Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics

CPERL Publication Alert: Home participation for infants with and without biological risk

Posted on November 13, 2024

Our colleague Beatriz Brugnaro led a team to publish on infant home participation in Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics.

CPERL Publication Alert: Expanding and Augmenting Data on Participation-Focused Strategies to be presented and published in Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

Posted on November 04, 2024

Coming soon to the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: the publication entitled, CareCorpus+: Expanding and Augmenting Caregiver Strategy Data to Support Pediatric Rehabilitation.

Project team members from the College of Applied Health Sciences at UIC

Funding Alert: CPERL teams up to secure ARPA-H funding

Posted on October 02, 2024

We have successfully teamed up to secure new ARPA-H funding as part of advancing a third theme in our lab's research agenda.

Rachel Ohene presenting research at AOTA Inspire Conference 2024

CPERL Alum Spotlight: Rachel Ohene

Posted on July 24, 2024

As we prepare to test the implementation of the Participation and Environment Measure Plus, we look back on a special CPERL alum, Rachel Ohene, who carried the torch in recruiting nearly 400 families…

CPERL Alum Spotlight: Shivani Saluja

Posted on June 24, 2024

Shivani graduates from UIC and begins pursuing her Master of Public Health degree at Yale

Publication Alert: Global early childhood development strategy

Posted on June 17, 2024

We want to celebrate a publication co-authored with CPERL lab director, Mary Khetani, and titled Early childhood development strategy for the world's children with disabilities.

Lauren Frame as a child eating an apple.

CPERL Welcomes Lauren Frame

Posted on June 10, 2024

We are excited to welcome our newest member, Lauren Frame, to the CPERL team! Lauren is an incoming E-OTD student who will be a research intern working on analyses for a project funded…

CPERL Team Welcomes Amin and Valeria

Posted on May 20, 2024

We’re thrilled to welcome Amin Alaani and Valeria Esparza to the CPERL research lab as our newest honors undergraduate research interns! Throughout the summer, they’ll be integral in our efforts to explore the…

Publication Alert: Representation of Child and Youth Participation within the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)

Posted on April 22, 2024

We are very excited to announce the publication of our original research article titled Representation of Child and Youth Participation within the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) in Disability and Rehabilitation. This work…

Publication Alert: A corpus of real-world solution-focused caregiver strategies for personalized pediatric rehabilitation service design

Posted on April 03, 2024

Coming soon to the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024): the latest NSF publication, CareCorpus: A corpus of real-world solution-focused caregiver strategies for personalized pediatric rehabilitation service…

Vivian, Natalie, and Mary at the 2024 NSF PI Meeting

CPERL and NLP attend and present at NSF PI meeting

Posted on April 01, 2024

The CPERL and NLP labs kicked off the Spring 2024 semester at the NSF Smart and Connected Communities Principal Investigators' Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee.

CPERL Welcomes Lilyanna Patton

Posted on February 26, 2024

We are excited to welcome Lilyanna Patton to the CPERL team! Lily is a first-year UIC E-OTD student and part of the Children, Youth and Families Scholarship of Practice Collaborative. She will…

Publication alert: Caregiver Strategies Supporting Community Participation Among Children and Youth with or at Risk for Disabilities: A Mixed-Methods Study

Posted on January 22, 2024

CPERL has teamed up to publish new original research titled, Caregiver strategies supporting community participation among children and youth with or at risk for disabilities: A mixed methods study, in Frontiers of Pediatrics journal.

Publication Alert: Scoping review on medical home care and educational services for children and youth on the autism spectrum