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!