We're back!

After Melissa’s sabbatical, we’re back with news from the lab!

We’ve had a busy, but successful past year! We published a bunch of papers and presented a lot at local, national, and international meetings (mostly by Zoom).

More exciting, however, have been the new additions to our team! We have two new postdocs in the lab this academic year, Dr. Shiloh Drake & Dr. Rachel Weissler. Carissa Diantoro joined our lab as a PhD student. And we have a new group of undergraduate friends working with us, including Karmella Fabiano, Trinity Gallardo, Toby Graham, Audrey Kirkpatrick, Princess Mason, Mary Mugeki, Christina O’Konski, Isabel Preligera, and Anna Wood.

We’ve got a number of projects in the works, including several papers which have been accepted for submission to special issues of Languages, Applied Psycholinguistics, and a few other journals we’ll keep under wraps ‘til they’re officially accepted. Some of these projects involve big teams from our lab, including postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

This year also saw us see off some of our newly minted alumni. Dr. Jonathan Wright successfully defended his dissertation and started a position as a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State University. Isabel Crabtree and Sabrina Piccolo both completed their honors theses and moved on to fun new positions.

We are looking forward to the rest of 2022!

Wrapping 2020!

We’ve had a busy fall term, with a strong lab presence at Psychonomics and the Acoustical Society of America Meetings, including presentations from graduate and undergraduate students. Jonathan Wright won one of the Psychonomic Society Graduate Conference Travel Awards for his work on classifying speech in adverse listening conditions. He and Dae-yong Lee are presenting work at the ASA meeting this week.

We’ve welcomed several new undergraduate students to the lab, including Michael Allen, Sabrina Piccolo, Jay Taylor, and Maya Treder. They’ve hit the ground running - Sabrina is working on her honors thesis and has been awarded a Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship for her project on interactions between unfamiliar accents, credibility, professionalism, and memory.

Zoë Haupt, Tillena Trebon, Maggie Wallace, and Allegra Wesson presented work at the Psychonomic Society and Acoustical Society of America Meetings. Tillie is also presenting her honors thesis at ASA this week. Zoë will present joint work with Melissa and our colleague Don Daniels at the Australian Linguistic Society Meeting next week. (Yes, for those of you keeping track, that’s three conferences and three different projects for Zoë, a third year undergraduate student!)

We’re also excited to welcome visitors to our lab. Recent Arizona grad, Shiloh Drake, has been hanging out with the lab this year, and is already a great contributor to our team. In January Rachel Weissler, a PhD candidate at University of Michigan will be joining us as a Courtesy Research Associate.

We’ve had fun this fall bonding (remotely) over lab pets (Hamilton & Eliza! Lulu! Margot! Frankie & Joey!), new recipes, and comfort food (both literal food and of the pop-culture variety). We’re excited to see what 2021 brings for the lab!

Starting the 2020 academic year with celebration

2020 has been a truly remarkable year - we are grateful that folks in the lab have stayed safe and healthy and have continued to support each other in these extraordinary times.

Somehow, in spite of all the turmoil, members of our lab have continued to do extraordinary work, and we would like to celebrate that work here.

Awards and honors

  • Cecelia Staggs was named a Graduate Research Fellow by the National Science Foundation.

  • Both Misaki Kato and Jonathan Wright were awarded Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants from the National Science Foundation for their dissertation projects.

  • Jonathan Wright received a number of other awards for his dissertation work including: the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship, a Duolingo Research Grant, and the M. Gregg Smith Fellowship.

  • Both Isabel Crabtree and Tillena Trebon received the Vice President for Research and Innovation Undergraduate Fellowship for their honors theses.

  • Zoë Haupt, Tillena Trebon, Maggie Wallace, and Allegra Wesson won the Humanities Undergraduate Poster Award for their presentation at the undergraduate research symposium.

  • The lab received two new NSF awards (outside of those described above) and a new award from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

  • Melissa Baese-Berk received the Faculty Research Mentor Award from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement.

Publications, presentations, and outreach

  • So far this year, we have published 5 papers in great journals including the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Language and Linguistic Compass, and the Journal of Phonetics.

  • COVID has slowed down our presentation rate, but we are looking forward to presentations at the 2020 Psychonomic Society and Acoustical Society of America virtual meetings.

  • We debuted an exhibit at Eugene Science Center - more are on the way!!

Hellos and goodbyes

  • This is the most bittersweet part of these posts!

  • We have welcomed several new undergraduate students into the lab including Spencer Hutchinson, Sabrina Piccolo, and Jay Taylor.

  • Dr. Misaki Kato successfully defended her dissertation. She continues to be affiliated with the lab and is consulting with Global LT.

  • Chasen Afghani and Kayla Walker both successfully defended their honors theses and graduated with departmental honors. Aubrey Whitty and Ashlyn Hawkinson also graduated with their bachelor’s degrees.

We are looking forward to continuing to work together to answer interesting questions about language. We also recognize that we need to continue to do more to directly address systemic inequalities, in academia and in our society. You can see some of the ways that we’re hoping to do that on our “Outreach and Impact” page. We’ll be using this space to hold ourselves accountable for change.

We wish everyone a wonderful remainder of this year and hope that you all are staying healthy, happy, and well.

Celebrating 2019

As we end the year, there is a lot to celebrate from our lab! Below, we’ve highlighted some of the many exciting accomplishments and events for the folks in our group.

Awards

  • Misaki Kato won a number of awards to help her complete her dissertation including: The Lokey Doctoral Science Fellowship, the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences Dissertation Research Award, and the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations Dissertation Support Grant.

  • Kayla Walker and Chasen Afghani both won awards from the Vice President for Research and Innovation’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. Kayla was a VPRI fellow this summer, and Chasen won a mini-grant to complete her honors thesis. Kayla was also awarded the Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement Travel Award to present her thesis at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in San Diego.

  • Melissa Baese-Berk was named the David M. and Nancy L. Petrone Faculty Scholar at the University of Oregon.

Publications and Presentations

  • The lab and our collaborators published 6 journal articles this year, including papers in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, Journal of Phonetics, and Phonetica.

  • The lab and our collaborators also published 4 proceedings papers in the Proceedings for the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

  • In addition to these 4 proceedings presentations at ICPhS in Australia, we had 9 other conference presentations this year.

  • We have continued our lab tradition of outreach and publication to the general public with four public-facing articles this year (two by Melissa, one by postdoc Zack Jaggers, and one co-authored by Zack & Melissa)!

Hellos and Goodbyes

  • This year, we welcomed many new lab members including two new PhD students: Kurtis Foster & Cecelia Staggs, and 6 new undergraduate research assistants: Ashlynn Hawkinson, Spencer Hutchinson, Katie LeMoine, Sydney Ozmat, Maggie Wallace, and Allegra Wesson.

  • We also cheered our graduates on! This year, Cydnie Davenport and Jennie Shen both completed honors theses. Zac Post and Zach Houghton also earned Bachelor’s degrees.

  • Dr. Amos Teo completed his PhD and moved on to work for Amazon. We miss him (and all of our graduates) but are excited to see what they do next!

We are looking forward to a great year in 2020 - continuing to celebrate our accomplishments and conduct high quality research in the lab! We wish all of you a wonderful New Year!

Lab Updates!

There has been a lot to celebrate in the lab lately! Amos Teo, the first official SPPLab graduate successfully defended his PhD, “Investigating Differential Case Marking in Sumi, a Language of Nagaland, Using Language Documentation and Experimental Methods”. Amos is now working for Amazon in Vancouver!

In June, the lab also said goodbye to several undergraduate students who graduated. Cydnie Davenport, Zach Houghton, Zac Post, and Jennie Shen all graduated in Spring. Cydnie completed a departmental honors thesis with Melissa and Jennie completed her honors thesis with Melissa in the Clark Honors College. We wish all of our graduates the best as they move on to new and exciting adventures!

Before Amos started his new job, he joined Melissa and Zack in Melbourne for the International Congress of Phonetic Science. All three presented talks, as did lab collaborator Eleanor Chodroff. Amos and Melissa also co-organized a special session on speech perception experiments in the field. The whole conference was very successful (and you should ask Melissa and Zack about their experience seeing penguins!).

We are also welcoming two new PhD students to the lab this fall, Kurtis Foster and Cecelia Staggs. 5(!) new undergraduate RAs are also joining the team (Spencer Hutchinson, Katie LeMoine, Sydney Ozmat, Maggie Wallace, and Allegra Wesson). We are thrilled to welcome all of them, and are excited to see our lab continue to grow and thrive.

In December, Melissa, Dae-yong Lee, and Kayla Walker head to San Diego for the Acoustical Society of America Meeting. Melissa will be giving two talks: a “hot topics” talk and a talk to Architectural Acoustics as part of a tutorial and panel about speech perception. Dae-yong and Kayla are each giving posters, presenting about their work in adaptation to unfamiliar speech.

More to come soon about new lab publications and what we are looking forward to in 2020!

Belated lab celebrations!

Kayla Walker received a Vice President for Research and Innovation Fellowship this summer for her honors thesis: The Role of Semantic Predictability in Adaptation to Non-Native Speech. Kayla will be presenting preliminary results from this work at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in San Diego in December. Congratulations, Kayla!

New lab successes!

Misaki Kato was awarded the Lokey Dissertation Science Fellowship - a major award, given to four students annually.

Cydnie Davenport was awarded the Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

We also had several papers accepted to the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, so we look forward to seeing our friends in Melbourne!

Congratulations to Graduates!

Congratulations to the members of the Class of 2018 in the lab: Jack Flemming, Joanna Kraski, and Alyssa Moore. Special congratulations to Alyssa Moore, who was selected as a member of the Oregon Six, an award given to "those six students deemed to be the most outstanding among those elected to membership [of Phi Beta Kappa] in a given year."

Congratulations again, and we will miss having you in the lab!

Congratulations to Lab Members

This week, we have a lot to celebrate!

Lab member Amos Teo was awarded the University of Oregon Doctoral Research Fellowship, the highest award to a dissertating student, for his project on differential case marking in Sumi.   

Recent graduate, and lab collaborator, Drew McLaughlin was awarded the Undergraduate Research Award from the University of Oregon Libraries for her honors thesis, "Coping with Adversity: Individual Differences in the Perception of Noisy and Accented Speech."

Congratulations Amos & Drew!!