Lab Members – LEARN Lab at NYU

Dr. Sudha Arunachalam
Principal Investigator/Lab Director
sudha@nyu.edu

Sudha is a Professor of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and M.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Southern California.

In her research program, Sudha examines how infants, toddlers, and preschoolers acquire their native language. She studies children who are developing typically, children with autism spectrum disorder, and children with language delay. Sudha is particularly interested in the learning mechanisms underlying language acquisition and in how caregiver-child interactions support learning. Outside of the lab, Sudha likes to take long walks in NYC, sometimes stopping to try new foods along the way.

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Panpan Cui
Postdoctoral Associate
panpan.cui@nyu.edu

Panpan is a postdoctoral associate in the Center of Health and Rehabilitation Research (CoHRR). She earned a Ph. D in International Cultural Studies with a concentration in Theoretical Linguistics from Tohoku University in Japan. Her research experience involves topics such as syntactic and semantic analysis of grammatical constructions, language assessment of young bilingual children, young children’s categorical perception of speech, etc. Her current interests focus on how children with and without autism spectrum disorder acquire lexical and syntactic meaning. Outside of the lab, Panpan enjoys reading, drawing, and spending time with her family.

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Yumeng Lin
Postdoctoral Associate
yl12287@nyu.edu

Yumeng is a postdoc in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. She is interested in how young children learn languages in different contexts and the influence of caregivers’ language input. She earned her PhD in linguistics from Zhejiang University. She also visited the psychology department at the University of Edinburgh as a joint PhD student. Outside of the lab, she enjoys reading, photography, music and exploring the city.

Lily Carroll
Doctoral Student
lgc3730@nyu.edu

Lily is a doctoral student in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. She is interested in how autistic and non-autistic children acquire emotion words and the role of caregiver input. Prior to starting her graduate studies, Lily earned her B.S. in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from Virginia Tech, with minors in French and Language Sciences. She also worked as a research assistant for the Autism Center at the Child Mind Institute and as lab manager of the LEARN Lab. Outside of the lab, she enjoys reading, yoga, and spending days with her cat.

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Vishakha Shukla
Doctoral Student
vshukla@nyu.edu

Vishakha is interested in studying how children acquire and develop various aspects of pragmatics cross-culturally. Particularly, they are interested in how caregiver-child interactions support pragmatic development in autistic and non-autistic children. Prior to joining the LEARN Lab, they were a member of Project Prakash, India where they studied communicative and socio-cognitive development of newly-sighted children. They hold an M.A. in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. In their free time, they enjoy trying to have “conversations” with their dog (who lives in India) over video calls.

Goldie Segol
Lab Manager
g.segol@nyu.edu

Goldie holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, and has previously worked in healthcare technology. She is interested in language acquisition and corpus linguistics. Outside of the lab, Goldie enjoys playing the violin, making art, and hanging out in parks.

Madelyn Escario
Master’s Research Assistant

Madelyn is an M.S. Communicative Sciences Disorders student at New York University. She finished her B.S. in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Santo Tomas and her M.A. in Linguistics coursework at the University of the Philippines – Diliman. She is interested in the intersections of linguistics and speech-language pathology and its clinical implications for English and Tagalog. Outside of work and school, Madelyn likes to paint, run, write, and spend time with family and friends.

Victoria Stackhouse

Master’s Research Assistant

Victoria is an M.S. candidate in the Communicative Sciences and Disorders program at New York University. She holds a B.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests focus on the pediatric population, specifically in areas such as language acquisition, language development, speech delays and autism. Outside of the lab, she enjoys singing, learning acoustic guitar, hiking, and relaxing on the water. Lastly, as a true Maryland native, she loves crabs with Old Bay seasoning.

Kaya Talbert

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Kaya is a junior at New York University, majoring in Linguistics. With the dream of becoming a speech-language pathologist in the future, she is actively taking elective courses in communicative sciences and disorders to be well-suited for graduate school. Kaya hopes to apply her linguistic background in the field of CSD and offer a unique perspective into the conversation of speech and language disorders. In her free time, Kaya thoroughly enjoys studying foreign languages and is currently pursuing a minor in Korean language at NYU.

Isabella Wolfe

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Isabella is a junior studying Linguistics at New York University. She is interested in documenting endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas. This summer, she worked with a non-profit organization called The Language Conservancy, working mainly with Siouan and Salishan languages. Her work with TLC has sparked an interest in language development in communities attempting to revitalize their cultural language. She hopes to pursue a master’s degree in Linguistics. Outside of academia, Isabella enjoys reading manga, attending poetry readings, and puzzling.

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