Graduate Students

Calen graduated from Emory University in 2022 with a B.S. in neuroscience and behavioral biology and a B.A. in English and creative writing. Calen first became interested in language and cultural evolution as an undergrad while doing comparative cognition research. As a graduate student, Calen continues to study language change and the mechanisms of language transmission. He is particularly interested in the evolution of language in online communities. At 6’7, Calen is the tallest cognitive psychologist he knows.

Juliana (Jules) graduated from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, with a BA in Language and Literature Studies – Teaching Degree, and an MA in Psycholinguistics. She is interested in knowing how humans develop and process language(s), hence studies on phonemic awareness and reading development, and sound symbolism and iconicity. Now she is a Fulbright scholar pursuing her PhD at Cornell. Main research interests include statistical learning, individual differences, L2 learning and processing, and LLMs. When she is not (happily) being a nerd about science, you can find her watching anime or playing games (mostly Dota 2) with one of her cats sitting on her desk.

Cristian graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a BS in Psychology and a BA in Modern Languages with a concentration in Spanish. He then went on to earn an MS in Psychology from the same university and afterwards served as an adjunct instructor there in the Department of Psychology. Before attending Cornell, Cristian most recently completed an MA in Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University where he further developed his research interests in language processing and second language acquisition in relation to cognitive and linguistic ability. He is particularly interested in how memory constraints and statistical regularities in language give rise to the chunking of linguistic information and how knowledge of these processes might be used to facilitate language development.

Serene joined the Cognitive Science of Language Lab in 2020. Her research focuses on second language (L2) learning, exploring the role of L2 chunking in structural priming, online sentence processing, memory for educational materials, and proficiency testing. Serene not only studies L2 learners in laboratory settings, but she also works with the English Language Support Office and the Language Resource Center at Cornell, offering language instructions and support for L2 learning and speaking students on campus.