🇦🇺 Dr. Sharon Smart

Sharon Smart is an experienced speech pathologist, clinician-researcher, and healthcare leader with a specialized interest in infant feeding, oral function, ankyloglossia, and early intervention. Over her career, she has worked extensively with infants and children experiencing feeding, swallowing, speech, and communication challenges, while also contributing to service innovation, professional education, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Sharon has held leadership roles in tongue-tie in Australia and internationally. She is passionate about bridging the gap between research and clinical care, ensuring that emerging evidence translates into meaningful outcomes for infants, families, and healthcare professionals.

Her research interests focus on the assessment of infant feeding, tongue function, oral motor function, and the use of objective technologies to better understand feeding efficiency and developmental outcomes. Sharon has been involved in collaborative research examining novel feeding assessment tools and their relationship to clinical and parent-reported measures, with a particular focus on infants with ankyloglossia.

At Tongue Time, Sharon presents preliminary findings exploring objective sucking metrics obtained through the nFant® Feeding Solution and their correlations with comprehensive clinical and caregiver-reported assessments, contributing to the growing evidence base informing infant feeding evaluation and management.