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.