The life of this scientist embodies multiple collaborations and intriguing journeys of discovery. Leonard (Chick) LaPointe, FSU’s distinguished Francis Eppes Professor of Communication Disorders, is also an adjunct faculty member in the College of Medicine and co-director of the new Neurolinguistic and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation Research Center, a partnership between Florida State and Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH).

Internationally, LaPointe’s appointments include universities in Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. He is an ardent teacher, a prolific writer (five books, hundreds of articles and papers…and a mystery novel), and a groundbreaking clinician and researcher on brain disorders.

What excites this master of multitasking and collegiality? “Our pioneering efforts on the effects of competition, distraction, or interference on the cognitive and linguistic processing of people with brain damage,” says LaPointe. “How does distraction affect memory, attention, talking? Our hottest topic now is our gait study in Parkinson’s disease. Talking or doing a mental calculation increases unsteady walking – a major contributor to injurious falls.”

We all perform less well when distracted, and we have intact nervous systems. LaPointe says that brain damaged accident survivors report, “’I’m fine, back in school, but if someone even walks by during an exam, I lose focus.’” With empathy as keen as his intellectual curiosity, he wants to discover and remediate the obstacles to a more full and communicative life: “It’s a great reason to get up every morning.” And he wants to do it globally: “Besides our professional exchanges with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, a Japanese group is making its second trip to FSU this fall. International collaboration is productive, great for our students, and a good way to disseminate the bright burning of our university’s “three torches”.

Distraction and competition may be his research focus, but LaPointe always returns to unity: “It may sound like scuffing home plate – ‘couldn’t do it without the team’ – but it’s true. I’m very grateful for the support and contributions of my colleagues, the College, the FSU administration, the College of Medicine, and TMH. It’s one thing that keeps me here.”