Author: Deangelo, Sara

Today’s Friday Feature is Emma Nguyen!

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What is your full name?

Emma Nguyen

What is your current status within your degree, what are you studying and who do you work with?

I am a doctoral student in Linguistics working with Dr. William Snyder.

Where were you before you started studying at UConn and what do you plan to do after graduating from UConn?

Before UConn, I received my BA in Linguistics at the University of Maryland. I am originally from Annapolis, Maryland. After graduation, I hope to continue in academia as a research scientist or professor at a university. 

What are your research interests and why?

I am mainly interested in investigating how young children successfully acquire their first language and the factors that may impact learning. My research specifically explores how children’s knowledge of the passive voice in English is influenced by the meaning of the verb that is used. For example, children’s early success with a sentence like “Tom was surprised by Lucy” may be due to their understanding of the verb “surprise”.

By establishing a baseline for what typical language development looks like for mono-lingual children, we may be able to have a deeper understanding of language development in populations that are different from this, including bilingual children as well as children from clinical populations. 

What are your favorite at home activities? 

During this pandemic, I’ve been reading a lot of books! This is a great opportunity for me to explore new worlds when I can’t go outside. I recently finished the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan which reignited my long love for Greek and Roman mythology. I also love to knit, crochet, and embroider. I really enjoy making homemade gifts that I can give to family and friends. I have made a bunch of baby blankets already!

To find out more about the study Emma works with, please follow this link: https://pal.uconn.edu/

Today’s Friday Feature is Gayoung Lee!

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Today’s Friday Feature is Gayoung Lee!

Let’s find out more about Gayoung Lee!

Gayoung Lee is currently a junior at UCONN, majoring in Biology and minoring in Psychology. Her goal after UCONN is to become a cardiovascular surgeon. She is passionate about low-income families and minorities being able to have access to affordable and high quality health care. Another big passion of hers is helping kids and being a part of their learning experience. She was a Taekwondo instructor for kids from the age of 3-16. She was also a Sunday school teacher at her local church. She is an advocate for mental health, minority rights and equality, and health equity. She works hard to educate her young students about kindness and acceptance of all people. Gayoung joined UCONN KIDS as a way to learn more about child development and become more educated about their cognitive skills and children with disabilities. Her favorite quote is by Malala Yousafzai. She said “Do not wait for someone else to come and speak for you. It’s you who can change the world.” Gayoung strives to become a leader and help people grow and learn in a unified front. In her free time, Gayoung enjoys spending time with her family and learning how to cook traditional Korean dishes. She loves creating vision boards and mood boards to help strike inspiration and motivation.

Today’s Friday Feature is Sudha Srinivasan, PT, PhD!

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Today’s Friday Feature is Sudha Srinivasan, PT, PhD!
Let’s find out more about Sudha Srinivasan, PT, PhD!
 
What lab are you from?
– Lab: REINVENT-PT Lab (REhabilitation INnoVations and Emerging Novel Technologies in Physical Therapy)
 
What is your role at UConn?
– I am an Assistant Professor in the Physical Therapy program within the Department of Kinesiology at UConn. I joined UConn in January 2019.
 
Can you tell us more about yourself?
– I am a pediatric physical therapist by training and earned my PhD in Kinesiology from UConn in 2014. My doctoral work focused on early identification of autism and the development of novel, embodied, movement-based interventions for school-age children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
I completed 2 post-doctoral fellowships – one at the University of Delaware looking at the healthcare needs of families of school-age children and youth with ASD and the 2nd through a UNICEF-funded project to develop open source Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) tool for non-verbal and minimally-verbal children with ASD. As part of this project, we developed a comprehensive, child-friendly icon-driven system available as picture cards, a desktop application, as well as Android and iOS apps to enable communication in children with communication impairments such as ASD, Cerebral Palsy, etc.
 
What studies are you currently working on?
– At UConn I am currently conducting on a few studies involving children and youth with developmental disabilities.
The “Play and Move” study is an intervention study that examines the effects of three types of play and movement interventions on motor, social communication, and cognitive skills of 6 to 14 year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The study involves children receiving interventions twice a week for a period of 8 weeks provided in a small group context involving the child, an expert clinician, an adult model, and the caregiver. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have transitioned the study online to tele health-based delivery using web- conferencing platforms. At present, families have the flexibility of either participating virtually or in-person, based on their convenience in the intervention.
The “Youth physical activity and function” study is aimed at studying physical activity patterns in youth with different types of developmental disabilities between 13 and 26 years of age. The study also seeks to understand perspectives relative to physical activity in stakeholders including youth with developmental disabilities themselves as well as among their caregivers, teachers, and therapists. As part of this study, we are presently conducting 1.5 hour-long focus group discussions with different groups of stakeholders to learn their experiences relative to getting youth with disabilities physically active, challenges they face, and suggestions they have to design better programs for this population.
 
What are your goals?
– I am very passionate about working with children. My long-term for research is to develop interventions, aids, technologies, etc. to empower individuals with disabilities and to enable them to fully engage in society to their maximum potential. I would like my work to inform clinical PT practice and enhance participation of children and youth with developmental disabilities. Ultimately, I would like my work to enable individuals with disabilities to lead fulfilling, physically healthy and happy lives.
 
What do you like to do for fun?
– I love reading fiction books, solving puzzles – word jumbles, Sudoku, logic puzzles, etc.., and watching movies with my husband!

Friday Feature ~ Dr. Ronald P. Rohner

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Today’s Friday Feature is Dr. Ronald P. Rohner!
Let’s find out more about Dr. Rohner!

Name: Dr. Ronald P. Rohner

Alma mater: Stanford University

Hometown: Storrs, Connecticut

Current position at UConn: Professor Emeritus and Director,  Rohner Center for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection, HDFS

Research: I’ve devoted the past 6 decades to understanding the long-term developmental effects of interpersonal relationships, especially parent-child relationships.

1) conduct and promote basic and applied research worldwide on issues surrounding interpersonal acceptance-rejection, with special emphasis on the form of parent-child relationship called parental acceptance-rejection

2) formulate and implement practical intervention, prevention, educational, and other such applications pertinent to these issues, and

3) foster and encourage knowledge-sharing by establishing the Rohner Center as the world’s pre-eminent information resource center regarding interpersonal acceptance and rejection

Research Summary: TED talk    Research history: IPARTheory conception to maturity

Current projects:

  • Child and adult mental health
  • Conduct problems, behavior disorders, and delinquency
  • School violence and teacher acceptance and rejection
  • Child welfare, including custody, parent education, foster care, and adoption
  • Healthy child development
  • Parental Alienation

Global reach: Our work on the issues of interpersonal acceptance and rejection has a global reach. For example, the readership distribution report from ScholarWorks shows more than 16,333 downloads of a single article from 1,157 institutions in 147 countries.

Leisure time: I work mostly 7 days a week just to keep-up with research and the needs of researchers and practitioners around the globe. But I always tell my colleagues and students “Work Well, Love well, and Play Well–and keep them in BALANCE”. So, to balance my day, I try to swim and walk when I can. And I love playing my harmonica.

Favorite movie: Charlotte’s web. Reason: It links well with my research and with the mission of the Rohner Center.  The movie centers around the life-changing friendship between a pig named “Wilbur” and a spider named “Charlotte”. It makes us realize how important it is to feel cared about (accepted) by the people most important in our lives.

Friday Feature ~ Nikole Giovannone

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Today’s Friday Feature is Nikole Giovannone!
 
Hi Nikole! Can you tell us more about yourself?
 
“My name is Nikole Giovannone, and I’m a 3rd year Ph.D. student studying Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Before I came to UConn, I studied Psychology and Linguistics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I grew up in Connecticut, so I was really happy to come back here to do my Ph.D.! At UConn, I’m a member of the Spoken Language Processing lab with my advisor, Dr. Rachel Theodore. Together, we study how children and adults with language impairment process speech sounds, and how their speech sound processing relates to other elements of language processing, like grammar, reading, and voice recognition. One of the goals of our research is to learn more about what causes some kids to have trouble with speech and language so that we can help speech-language pathologists figure out how to best treat them. When I’m done with my Ph.D., I hope to continue studying speech and language processing, and perhaps become a professor! When I’m not taking classes or working on my research, I love to do just about anything creative. Some of my favorite hobbies are baking bread, going birdwatching, painting with watercolors, and knitting. Here’s a picture of me in a sweater that I knitted!”
 
More about the study that Nikole is working on: IRB protocol H17-051, PI Dr. Rachel M. Theodore: “Determinants of Phonetic Category Structure” https://slaplab.uconn.edu/

Friday Feature ~ Shuyan Wang

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Today’s Friday Feature is Shuyan Wang!

What is your name?
– Shuyan Wang

Can you tell us more about yourself?
– I am from China. I did my undergraduate study at Liaocheng University, China, and got a master’s degree in linguistics at University College London (UCL), UK. I am now a Ph.D student of Linguistics at UConn. The link to my personal website: https://shuyanuconnling.weebly.com/

What degree are you pursuing?
– Phd in Linguistics

Which lab are you representing?
– The Parametric Approaches to Language (P.A.L.) is working on the first language acquisition with Prof. William Snyder.

What is your position in the Lab?
– A fifth year graduate student.

What have you learned from working in the lab?
– In the lab, I received intensive training on conducting behavioral studies in children and adults to investigate the development of pragmatics, semantics, and syntax. We also conducted corpus studies of children’s spontaneous production and their maternal input.

What are your future goals?
– I am currently earning a doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Connecticut with primary specialization in language acquisition and secondary specializations in syntax and sign language studies. I would like to become an educational researcher.

What is your favorite activity to do in my free time?
– I like listening to music, watching movies, and cooking.

What is your favorite kids movies?
– Mulan, and Frozen.

Follow this link for more information on the P.A.L.: https://pal.uconn.edu/

Protocol #: H15-276, “Research on Child Language Acquisition”