Current Research Projects
See my CV for a complete list of projects, publications and presentations. My current research strives to reveal how the mental lexicon is represented. I approach this by computationally modelling the speech of thousands of speakers (computational phonetics) (e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104601) and the linguistic judgement from thousands of people (computational phonology) (e.g., https://psyarxiv.com/df8ru/).To complement my theoretical contributions, I harness computational linguistics for social good, particularly in the area of human health. A few ongoing collaborative projects of mine highlight this line of effort:
- Using speech as a biomarker, e.g.,
- NSF Award #2037266 ($750,000): SenSE: Smart Electropalatography for Linguistic and Medical Applications (SELMA)
- UF Research Opportunity Seed Fund ($85,000): `Demystifying perceptual evaluations of parkinsonism sub-categorizations using machine learning'
- Enhancing speech technology and resources on African American English, e.g., NEH Award #PW-277433-21 ($350,000): `Reanimating African American Oral Histories of the Gulf South: Tailoring Education and Research through Natural Language Understanding'
- Using sociolinguistics for precision health -- tailoring medical messages for a better health outcome, e.g. UF CTSI Award ($49,004): `A Sociolinguistic-Enabled Web Application to Precision Health Intervention for African Americans' .
- Using phonology to improve speech disfluency detection of a diverse population, e.g., the Fluency in School Project
- Using corpus linguistics for understanding social dynamics during public health crises, e.g. UF Informatics COVID-19 fund ($18,875): `The emergence of COVID-19 team science: tracking topics, networks and expertise in global COVID-19 research'.
Third-party funding sponsors
National Endowment for the Humanities
