Lab Managers

Christi Gomez
Christi received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Penn State University in 1998. After receiving her degree, Christi returned to her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Christi joined us in February 2001 as our Laboratory Manager.

Anthony Kelly
Before coming to work in the Speech Perception and Learning Laboratory, Anthony taught English as second language in France for a number of years. He earned his B.A. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University in 1986 and studied linguistics and translation (French - English) at Universite Paris IV.

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Dan Hufnagle
Dan aims to better understand how the mind transforms linguistic input into systematic knowledge of language patterns. Dan investigates the impact on learning of aspects of language input such as variability, repetition, and phonetic cues to grammatical category. Dan earned his Ph.D. at the University of Calgary.

Eva Reinisch
Eva is interested in listeners' use of acoustic cues in native and non-native speech processing; how listeners flexibly adjust their phoneme categories in relation to acoustic vs. lexical context information. Eva conducted the research for her PhD project at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

David Wozny
David received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA. His research interests include auditory category acquisition and robust speech recognition. David enjoys using psychophysics in combination with probabilistic perceptual and cognitive models to understand the computational mechanisms that govern human perception and learning.

Graduate Students

Jingyuan (Sofia) Huang
Jingyuan is interested in the interaction between the perception of first and second languages. She also has interests in first and second language acquisition. Jingyuan got her BS in psychology from Beijing Normal University.

Sung-Joo Lim
Sung-joo has a B.S. in Computer Science from CMU. She is interested in studying auditory perception. She would specifically like to study the similarities between language and music and how music affects human emotion and memory.

Ran Liu
Ran is interested in the mechanisms that support general perceptual learning, with a focus on the auditory domain. She uses a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging methods to investigate how long-term auditory representations are formed and how they are flexibly adapted to short-term environmental regularities. Ran received her B.S. in Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Undergraduate Researchers

Zachary Betka
Rachel Browne
Kristen Suzich
Minfu Zhang

Lab Alumni

Former Post-Doctoral Researchers

Dr. Kaori Idemaru
- Assistant Professor, University of Oregon

Dr. Travis Wade
- Currently at Posit Science Corporation &Institut für Maschinelle Spachverarbeitung, Universität Stuttgart

Former Graduate Students

Dr. Sara Guediche, PhD
- Currently in a post-doctoral position in the Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Department at Brown University
Dr. Erin Ingvalson, PhD
- Currently in a post-doctoral position at Northwestern University
Erika Laing, MS
- Currently in graduate school at University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Vivienne L. Ming, PhD
- Currently a visiting scholar at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at UC Berkeley
Dr. Dan Mirman, PhD
- Currently director of the Language and Cognitive Dynamics Laboratory at Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute
Dr. Joseph D.W. "Beau" Stephens, PhD
- Currently an Assitant Professor at North Carolina A&T, Department of Psychology

Former Undergraduate Researchers

Kathleen Agres (2002 - 2005)
Marc Azoulay (2010 - 2011)
Preeti Badve (2009 - 2010)
Zeljka Buturovic Bradaric (2000 - 2002)
Siobhan Cooney (2000 - 2002)
Monica Data (2002 - 2002)
Nina Durai (2003 - 2004)
Ashley Episcopo (2002 - 2004)
Josh Fishbein (2005)
Brian Frederick (2000 - 2002)
Hannah Gordon (2009)
Sara Guediche (2004 - 2004)
Rachel Johnson (2010 - 2011)
Sara Kapner (2003 - 2005)
Ayus Kennedy (2005 - 2006)
Camilla Kydland(2002 - 2003)
Erika Laing (2000 - 2002)
Chris Laskowski
Brian Leahy (2003 - 2004)
Brian Levinthal (2002 - 2003)
Seth Liber (2001 - 2003)
Ran Liu (2007 - 2008)
Brian Mathias (2004 - 2007)
Laura Mazurkewicz (2002 - 2004)
Neha Mehta (2005 - 2006)
Wendy Niedelman (2004 - 2007)
Megan Nisargandi (2007 - 2008)
Howard Soh (2009 - 2011)
Eva Stroynowski (2002 - 2004)
Eric To (2001 - 2002)
Jodi Poniewaz (2001 - 2001)
Jeremy Wortman (2002 - 2003)