Simplified Signs

Nicole Kissane Lee, M.D., Ed.M., had the privilege of formally starting the "Simplified Sign System" project with Dr. John Bonvillian in 1997 when she was a first-year pre-medical student at the University of Virginia. After many hours meticulously studying and testing the memory and recall of simplified signs, Dr. Lee and Dr. Bonvillian published the "Simplified Sign System" on the internet in the spring of 2001 which exponentially launched its soon-to-be international notoriety. Dr. Lee graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001 with High Distinction in Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. Bonvillian, with her thesis work on the "Simplified Sign System" gaining recognition for its unique innovation from The Today Show, CNN, The Washington Post, and CosmoGirl, to name a few. Dr. Lee went on to obtain her medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia, in Richmond, VA, her surgical residency training at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, FL, and fellowship training in advanced laparoscopic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. Dr. Lee continued her education while in Boston, obtaining additional fellowship training in Medical Simulation from Brigham and Women's Hospital. She also obtained an Ed.M. with a focus in Technology and Innovation from Harvard University in 2013.

Tracy T. Dooley was an undergraduate honors student at the University of Virginia and a member of Dr. Bonvillian's research group in the early 1990s, where she studied handedness in the young sign-learning children of Deaf parents. After earning B.A. degrees in Linguistics and Spanish with a minor in Psychology, she obtained her Master of Divinity degree from Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA. While studying theology, she also pursued training in sign language interpretation at DeKalb College (now Georgia State University Perimeter College). After moving back to Virginia in 2003, Ms. Dooley rejoined Dr. Bonvillian's research group, where she focused on the expansion of the Simplified Sign System to include more concepts, the writing and editing of Volumes 1 and 2, and overseeing the development of the sign illustrations. After Dr. Bonvillian's death, Ms. Dooley updated both volumes of the system in preparation for publication.

Filip T. Loncke is a psycholinguist from Belgium who came to the United States in 1997 as a professor at the Curry School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Prior to his arrival in the U.S., he worked for twenty years as an educational psychologist and as a school superintendent for services for children with disabilities. He obtained his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Special Education from the University of Ghent, and an M.A. and Ph.D. degree in neurolinguistics from the University of Brussels. While in Belgium, he was a co-developer of a manual sign system that is currently still in use in parts of Europe. Since his arrival in the U.S. in the late 1990s until Dr. Bonvillian's passing, he collaborated with Dr. Bonvillian on several research projects related to the Simplified Sign System.