People
Principal Investigator
Katie Schuler
Katie is an Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her B.A. in Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Georgetown University. She is pictured here with her daughters Joan (5) and Dory (9 months).
Lab Manager
Alessandra Pintado-Urbanc
Alessandra Pintado-Urbanc is the current lab manager of the Child Language Lab. She graduated with a B.A. in Linguistics from The University of Pennsylvania in December 2022. She is particularly interested in psycholinguistics and language acquisition. Born into a trilingual household, Alessandra has always enjoyed learning new languages and traveling!
Graduate Students
Yiran Chen
Yiran Chen is a fifth-year PhD student in the Child Language Lab. She graduated with a B.S. in Psychology, Child Studies and French from Vanderbilt University. She is interested in various topics in psycholinguistics and language acquisition, particularly the acquisition of linguistic variation. In her free time, Yiran enjoys making music and food.
Daoxin is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. Before coming to Penn, she earned her BA in English Language from Tsinghua University. She uses various methods to investigate the acquisition of linguistic generalizations: How do learners identify the regular rules in their language in the presence of irregular items? How do they make use of the input data available to them? Why do children seem to be better at learning the rules than adults?
Research Assistants
Tula is a Senior Psychology major with double minors in African American and Legal Studies at the University of San Francisco. She is a Teaching Assistant for American Sign Language and a research assistant in the Child Language Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cynthia is a senior at UPenn studying Cognitive Science.
Abby Ray
Abby is a senior at UPenn studying Cognitive Science and pursuing a master’s in linguistics. Her main interests are mental lexicon and sociolinguistics. She's also the creative director of Quake Magazine and likes to build gundams and sing to her cat.
Milana Korobko
Milana is a junior at UPenn studying Psychology. She is interested in developmental psychology, particularly its overlap with language acquisition, autism spectrum disorder, and emotion regulation.
Nina Wang
Nina is a freshman at UPenn studying Linguistics and Political Science. She is interested in sociolinguistics, language acquisition, and historical linguistics.
Lab Alumni
Research assistants
Ariel Mathis
Lauren Kim
Amy Krimm
Katarina Siggelkow
Aja Altenhof
Anna Alberski
Iris Zhong
Annalise Kendrick
Stefan Pophristic
Madison Reasnor
Nathaniel Serio
Breasia Scott
Dorina Domi
Ayyah Alhuraibi
Jasmine Raj
Madison Connelly
Jessica Burke
Join our lab!
Interested in joining our lab? We'd love to have you!
Postdocs interested in joining the lab should email Katie to express interest and apply to the MindCORE postdoctoral research fellowship.
Prospective grad students should email Katie to express interest and apply to the Linguistics program at the University of Pennsylvania. Applications are due in early December.
Undergrads should fill out this application and email our lab manager at childlanglab@sas.upenn.edu. Undergrads can work in the lab for pay or credit (independent study or honors thesis). For more information about research opportunities at Penn, visit the Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships.
High school students can work in the lab through school internship programs (email our lab manager at childlanglab@sas.upenn.edu to discuss) or through the Penn LENS program.
To learn more about what it is like to work with us, see our Lab Handbook.