I am an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford where I direct the Speech and Cognitive Development Lab. For the most detailed and up-to-date information about my research program, please explore our lab website.
Yes, I am recruiting students for my lab! We have openings for undergraduate research assistants, Ph.D. students, and a postdoc. I can accept prospective Ph.D.students through Linguistics and Computer Science. Just list my name as a potential advisor when you apply. Postdoctoral applications should submit application materials here. Undergraduate research assistants should submit an application here.
Research
Most recent CV available here.
My research interests are in speech science, infant and child speech & language development, and psycholinguistics, including:
- Developmentally. How do children master complex speech patterns during periods of rapid anatomical change?
- Cross-linguistically. How is speech and language variation encoded across different languages over the course of early language acquisition?
- Experientially. How does sensory experience, especially childhood deafness, affect speech and language patterning?
To address these questions, I combine classic methods in linguistic phonetics and psycholinguistics such as in-situ fieldwork and acoustic measurement, with approaches such as crowdsourcing, eye-tracking, and computational modeling of largescale, natualistic speech corpora. 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 allowed me to learn functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and add that neuro-imaging technique to my methodological toolbelt.
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.
Ask me about citizen science!
Learn about our research program for children with hearing loss, 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.