Bio

I grew up in small Indiana and Ohio towns, and by kindergarten, I knew I would become an astronaut. By high school, my goal evolved to programmer-astronaut. So in my first semester of college, I took an astronomy class, a programming class, a calculus class, and a Chinese language class. My plan held until two years later, when I studied abroad in China and saw the stars from Inner Mongolia. My time in China completely changed my life. From that moment on I knew I wanted to study languages and linguistics. I ended up spending several years in mainland China and Taiwan and traveling throughout Asia. I returned to Ohio State to get my Ph.D. with the hope to one day inspire other students in the same way that foreign languages helped me find my path. In graduate school, I was trained in linguistic theory, East Asian languages, psycholinguistic methods, and data analysis and statistics. In 2015 I moved to Pittsburgh and established the Language Acquisition, Processing, and Pedagogy Lab (LAPP Lab) at Carnegie Mellon University. Graduate and undergraduate students in the lab help carry out research on the mechanisms and architecture underlying language acquisition and processing. LAPP Lab also aims to develop real-world pedagogical innovations for language instructors and learners. At CMU I teach a variety of courses on second language acquisition, Chinese language, and research methods. Despite all this, I still have not heard from NASA.

Department Member Since 2015