Biography

My academic career has been driven by a dual passion for language and the brain. Pursuing degrees in neuroscience and Korean at the Georgia Institute of Technology made me curious about how language is acquired and processed neurally. While my experience as a student of Korean inspired questions about language, time spent in neuroscience courses and laboratories taught me about the tools needed to answer those questions. Now, I intend to investigate the neural underpinnings of speech perception at Cambridge’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. My goal is to research the ways in which our brains deal with ambiguous speech. As anyone who has learned a new language will attest, it can be exceptionally difficult to identify the words produced by native speakers. In addition, myriad factors—such as a loud environment, accented speech, or unfamiliar vocabulary—can make fulfilling one’s role as a listener more difficult even in one’s native language. By discovering what scenarios allow for optimal word learning, I hope to inform more effective methods in language pedagogy. I am beyond honored to be joining the Gates Cambridge community and look forward to meeting my fellow scholars at Cambridge.

Previous Education

Georgia Institute of Technology Korean Studies 2021