Dr. Smith-Lock is a speech pathologist, linguist and psychologist. She is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology at Curtin University, and Director of KSL Language & Literacy, which provides clinical services to children with oral language and literacy difficulties. Dr. Smith-Lock has extensive experience working with school-aged children with language and literacy needs both in schools and in private practice. She regularly provides professional development workshops to teachers and speech pathologists on teaching practices for oral language and literacy. Her research focuses on the acquisition of oral language, reading and spelling, and their disorders. She aims to understand the nature of specific language impairment and dyslexia, to establish an evidence base for their effective treatment, and to support the use of evidence-based practice in everyday practice.