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)

Website

I study queer and trans language, mostly amongst English-using trans folks in the United States. I currently have projects looking at: the pronouns you guys and y'all, listener perception(s) of queer/gay voice, and trans-affirming statistical methods.

René Boye

(he/him)

I am a second-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.

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.

Karina Scheifer

(she/her)

I am a first-year Ph.D. student. I am interested in low-resource NLP and field linguistics. I have worked with Northern Tungusic, Siberian Turkic and Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, as well as Finnic and Basque languages. My research focuses on morphological complexity and language variation.

Ashvini Varatharaj

(she/her)

I am a fourth-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.

Yanlu Zhong

(she/her)

I am a second-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)

Website |

I am a fifth-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 Researchers

Khang Dinh

(he/him)

I am a fourth-year Linguistics student interested in how the various correlates of tone interact with meaning, and how these questions can be meaningful to under-resourced language communities. I have secondary interests in applying linguistic research methodologies to music.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Siddharth Chattoraj

(he/him)

Website |

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.

Shahil Patel

(he/him)

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