Assistant Professor
University of California, Los Angeles
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at UCLA where I direct the Speech and Cognitive Development Team. For the most detailed and up-to-date information about my research program, please explore our lab website.
Most recent CV available here.
My research specialization is in speech science and speech development, especially among children who receive cochlear implants, including:
To address these questions, I combine classic methods in linguistic phonetics and psycholinguistics such as in-situ fieldwork, articulatory modeling, and acoustic measurement, with newer approaches such as crowdsourcing, eye-tracking, and the analysis of largescale, natualistic speech databases. Most recently I was awarded a KL2 translational science training award (akin to the K-series at NIH) through UCLA's Clinical and Translational Science Institute. This award will allow me to learn functional near-infrared spectroscopy and add that neuro-imaging technique to my methodological toolbelt in the coming years.
In my work, I often use children as model systems because they undergo tremendous physiological and cognitive changes within a very short period of time, making them ideal testing grounds for theories of phonetic variation, learning, and change.
Learn about our research program for children with cochlear implants, the Learning to Listen Project, and explore our educational library. We frequently partner with local speech-language pathologists, pediatric audiologists, and families of children with hearing loss to create resources that will benefit the community, so please get in touch with me if our research group can provide anything for your clinic or family.