Professor Grech is the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Head of the Department of Communication Therapy and Deputy Chair of the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Malta. As a registered audiologist and speech-language pathologist, she lectures mainly in areas related to speech/language pathology and audiology. She has been invited as visiting lecturer by various Higher Education Institutions including Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt; Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium; Fontys Hogeschool. Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Göteborg University, Sweden; Huddinge University Hospital, Sweden; Institut Libre Marie Haps, Brussels, Belgium; KHBO, Brugge, Belgium; Lessius Hogeschool, Antwerp, Belgium; University of Oulu, Finland; and the University of Catania, Sicily. She has been an external examiner for postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong, South Africa and Belgium.
Professor Grech has been recruited by the EC on several occasions as an expert Evaluator for the Horizon 2020, FP7 and FP6 programmes of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities. She also worked for the European Union Programmes Unit, Malta, as an evaluator of proposals submitted under the Grundtvic and Erasmus programmes. Professor Grech has been also appointed as an expert evaluator for National Research Councils in Romania, Finland and Cyprus. She represented Malta on the COST Domain for Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (ISCH) until completion of the mandate. Helen Grech is currently a member of the COST Review Panel representing Malta for the Medical and Health Sciences domain. She is also a member of the management committee to COST Action IS1406 and was also involved in 2 other past COST Actions.
Professor Grech was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Research Fellowship where she carried out research at the University of Limerick, Ireland. During her postdoctoral term she standardised a speech and language assessment for early identification of Maltese children with communication difficulties. She was also awarded an Individual Mobility Grant under Tempus Programme and received funding from the EU to co-ordinate a 4-year Marie Curie FP6 project. She has also been awarded several local research grants by the University of Malta. Her research interests are related to speech and language acquisition and disorders in bilingual populations. She has several publications in international and local scientific journals and has contributed several chapters in books. Helen Grech is a reviewer and serves on the editorial Board of peer-reviewed journals and is a member of several international, British and local learned societies.
Professor Grech is the current President of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP).
Roles/duties in the project: To provide expertise in speech and language acquisition in bilingual children and developmental speech sound disorders, mentors one M.Sc. by Research student focusing on the speech assessment and intervention aspects of the device, attends project internal meetings and consortium meetings. Creates links with SLPs associations etc. to evaluate the product and for dissemination and exploitation of results, with typical end users in workshops, seminars, therapy sessions etc.