People | CPLS Lab @ UCSB

Principal Investigator

Simon Todd

(he/him)

I am a computational psycholinguist with a focus on speech perception. A central theme in my work is the way that small-scale cognitive processes associated with in-the-moment listening can have large-scale, long-term implications for linguistic knowledge and behavior. To investigate this theme, my work combines computational modeling, psycholinguistic experiments, and large-scale corpus analysis.

Graduate Students

Cooper Bedin

(they/them)

I'm a sociocultural and computational linguist, mainly interested in the relationship between language, gender, and sexuality. I work on how people attribute social cateogories (such as gender and sexuality) to others based on the voice, and on computational/quantitative methods for analyzing gender in ways that are affirming and accurate.

Chadi Ben Youssef

(he/him)

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I’m a linguist who uses computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistics methodologies to investigate a diverse range of cognitive, structural, and sociocultural questions; with a focus on techniques that allow for the quantitative analysis of low resource languages and imbalanced/sample biased data sets. I work on Tunisian Arabic, French, English, Spanish, and the Radical-Right discourse.

René Boye

(he/him)

I am a first-year Ph. D. student. I mostly use corpus linguistic methods to study grammatical variation. I also have a long-standing interest in foreign language learning. My research interests include corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, (comparative) syntax as well as language variation.

Chris Brendel

(he/him)

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I am a Ph.D. candidate who applies computational and cognitive linguistic theories to understand language change. I work primarily with historical written corpora, particularly of Icelandic. My research interests include lexical access, evolutionary linguistics, computational phylogenetics, lexicographic data management, and linguistic approaches to literary analysis.

Cedar Brown

(they/them)

I look at trans inclusive language and online trans communities. I investigate changes regarding language/language practices in conversation with sociocultural linguistics, computational linguistics, sociophonetics, trans linguistics, raciolinguistics, and queer theory.

Ashvini Varatharaj

(she/her)

I am a third-year Ph.D. student. My primary research interests include taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding language acquisition with the help of computational modeling, linguistics, and cognitive science. I am also interested in how information-theoretic methods can be used to analyze language change over time.

Albert Ventayol-Boada

(he/him)

I'm a documentary linguist who levarages methods from Corpus and Computational Linguistics for the description of endangered languages. My research focuses on the challenges that synchronic variation at the level of lexical categorization, morphosyntax, and discourse poses for language description. I work primarily with the Yukaghir languages.

Yanlu Zhong

(she/her)

I am a first-year Ph.D. student. My research interests lie in psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics. Specifically, I am interested in using psycholinguistic experiments, computational modeling, and corpus-based methods to uncover underlying mechanisms of first and second language acquisition and processing. I am currently working on multiword sequences and how emotions predict language processing.

Marina Zhukova

(she/her)

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I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student. I use computational and sociocultural linguistic methodologies, coupled with experimental methods, to study conversational AI, emoji perception and interpretation, and multimodal communication.

Undergraduate Thesis / Capstone Students

Josephine Kaminaga

(she/they)

I'm a second-year Statistics major with a minor in Language and Speech Technology. I am primarily interested in machine translation and text generation. I maintain secondary fascinations regarding language change, online fan communities, and sociocultural linguistics.

Jennie Wu

(she/her)

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I am a fourth-year Applied Mathematics major and am interested in the computational aspect of Linguistics, such as building more efficient translation models.

Daniel Yeung

(he/him)

I am a third year Language and Speech Technologies major with a minor in Japanese. I love exploring language acquisition, and how we can apply computational methods to increase our understanding of how we retain/perceive language. I am also interested in seeing how language technology can improve our daily lives!

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Siddharth Chattoraj

(he/him)

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I am pursuing a Statistics & Data Science and Theater dual degree and a minor in Language and Speech Technologies. I am interested in the intersection of data and language structure and development.

Wanzhen Fu

(she/her)

I am pursuing degrees in Statistics & Data Science, Linguistics with an emphasis in Language & Speech Technologies, and Economics. I am interested in using computational linguistics and statistical methods to decipher complex social dynamics and potential risks through sentiment analysis.

Jiashu Huang

(he/him)

I am currently in my third year of undergraduate studies, majoring in Statistics and Data Science. My academic interests are primarily centered around the computational aspect of linguistics, as well as exploring the intersection of linguistics and machine learning.

Shahil Patel

(he/him)

I am a second year Statistics & Data Science and Mathematics double major. I am interested in analysing the evolution of language over time using data science techniques.