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.
Research
My research specialization is in speech science and child speech development, in typical and atypical development (children with hearing loss), including:
- Developmentally. How do children master complex speech patterns during periods of rapid anatomical change?
- Cross-linguistically. How is speech variation encoded across different languages?
- Experientially. How does sensory experience affect speech patterning?
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, naturalistic 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. Most recent CV available here.
News
The lab's work was reported on in the UCLA Newsroom! Read more about it (and our rocket ship!).
Citizen Science
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.