Me at Wheaton Metro station in DC, home to the longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere
I am an incoming PhD student in Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. The areas of linguistics I'm most interested in are L1 acquisition, formal semantics, and syntax.
I worked in Maryland's Language Acquisition Lab for most of my undergrad career under the direction of Jeffrey Lidz. The work I did focused on children's acquisition of syntax and semantics, often investigated using preferential-looking and habituation-switch methods. I will be presenting some of this work focused on children's knowledge of wh-islands in a talk at BUCLD 51.
My Honors Thesis at Maryland was directed by Valentine Hacquard and focused on modal verb competence in children aged 2-5 years old. I presented this work in a presentation to the department in May 2026.
In the summer of 2024, I worked as a research assistant in Elika Bergelson's lab at Harvard University. My project looked at speech input to young deaf/hard of hearing children who have recieved cochlear implants. I presented this work in a talk at BUCLD 50. [poster]
In the summer of 2023, I was part of a Computer Science NSF REU at Salisbury University. My group worked on a computer vision model to visually identify, classify, and track oysters in an underwater environment, with applications in aquaculture and environmental monitoring/protection.
Teaching
At UMD, I worked as a teaching assistant for Tonia Bleam for three semesters (see below), working with class sizes of 20-30 students. This involved grading weekly assignments and exams, holding office hours, and leading review sessions before exams.
LING240 - Language and Mind, Spring 2024 (~30 students)
LING311 - Syntax I, Fall 2024 (~20 students)
LING311 - Syntax I, Spring 2025 (~25 students)
Etc.
From Spring 2024 - Fall 2025, I was the representative of UMD's Linguistics Department on the Dean's Undergraduate Advisory Board within the College of Arts & Humanities.
When I'm not doing schoolwork I like to play chess & baseball, code hobby projects, and enjoy the outdoors. I was also involved with the quizbowl team at Maryland, and I'm a big fan of trivia in general.
