Honors

Casey O’Brien — Casey graduated in Summer 2025 with a B.A. in Linguistics and a minor in Digital Humanities. Her research—conducted through URSP under the guidance of Dr. Bahtina—centers around a sociolinguistic analysis of poetry as a creative medium of self-expression for women. In addition to linguistics, she is passionate about theatre as well as physical, digital, and intellectual accessibility. Casey plans to take a gap year before pursuing further education in an aim to combine her varied interests.

Max Meszaros — Max graduated in June 2025 with a B.A. in Linguistics. In his two years at UCLA he worked with Professor Sundara and PhD candidate Jahnavi Nakar as a research assistant and on his own independent research. In his senior year, he conducted an experiment investigating if and how acquiring a second language can affect first language pronunciation in naturalistic speech. After graduation he will pursue a PhD in Linguistics.

Dhanya Charan — Dhanya graduated with College Honors with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology. She worked closely with Dr. Sundara and Dr. Mateu to investigate how children learning English acquire vowel-initial words. Her research was recognized for presentation at BUCLD50, supported by a Paula Menyuk Award. She looks forward to further exploring how learners acquire phonological patterns and how cognitive biases interact with such knowledge.

Emma Montilla — Emma graduated in June 2025 with a B.A. in Applied Linguistics. She was a research assistant in the Speech & Cognitive Development Lab and completed a project on phonological development in Spanish-Quechua bilingual children. She was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Taiwan, starting August 2025. She is passionate about hearing health, multilingual education, and using research findings to improve language development outcomes for children with hearing loss. After returning to the US, she hopes to continue working in research and clinical environments and earn a PhD and AuD.

Arjun Pawar — Arjun graduated in Spring 2025 with a B.A. in Linguistics and a B.S. in Computational Mathematics. He explored his interdisciplinary interests while learning from both departments for his double major and undertook projects in computational linguistics. With his faculty research advisor, Dr. Cychosz, he conducted research wherein he worked extensively with language development data. He hopes to venture further into the field of computational linguistics and explore newer areas within it. In the upcoming Fall, he will be joining Stanford University.

Lori Garavartanian — Lori graduated in June 2025, double majoring in Applied Linguistics & Political Science & a minor in Labor Studies. She enjoyed learning about syntax and the flexibility of Armenian sentence composition with help from Dr. Silvestri. Her interest in the construction and social usage of language has contributed to her desire to practice law and become a legal advocate. This Fall, she will pursue a Juris Doctorate at USC School of Law with hopes to one day put her language knowledge to use in the courtroom.

Gareth Yu — Gareth graduated in Summer 2025 with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology. His research focused on applying data-driven methods, such as Bayesian Non-negative Matrix Factorization, to self-paced reading times from naturalistic stories. After graduation, he will work as the laboratory manager for the Quantitative Research Collaboratory under Dr. Amanda Montoya. Following his gap year, Gareth hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology to develop statistical techniques for handling the complex data structures encountered in psychology and other social sciences.

    

Jennifer Miyaki — Jennifer graduated in Summer 2025 with a B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics through UCLA’s Departmental Scholars Program, graduating with Departmental Honors, College Honors, and the Dean’s Prize for Research. Her research interests include sign language phonology and sociolinguistics, particularly phonological compound reduction in American Sign Language (ASL) and style-shifting between different signing variants. Outside of linguistics, she is considering studies in clinical social work and disability law and is currently doing a year-long pre-law Disability Law Fellowship with the Coelho Center at Loyola Law School.

Joyce Tao — Joyce graduated in Winter 2025 with a B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology. Her academic focus centers on sociolinguistics, particularly the intersections of language, identity, and society. She was captivated by code-switching as a lens to examine how linguistic adaptability shapes cultural cognition and social belonging.

Monique Wong — Monique graduated in Winter 2025 with a B.A. in Linguistics and Computer Science. She has a strong interest in computational linguistics and neurolinguistics, with research experience in parsing and natural language processing. After graduation, Monique plans to take a brief hiatus from academia to travel, explore new places, and perhaps pick up a few languages along the way. P.S. She loves the challenge of ordering food in a language she doesn’t understand.

Michelle Chan — Michelle graduated in Fall 2023 with a B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology. Her inspiration stems from her role as a research assistant in various labs, including linguistics and cognitive psychology. Those experiences have ignited her passion for research. She is particularly interested in bilingualism and code-switching thus her senior research project focused on exploring the code-switching pattern of Cantonese-English bilinguals. Following graduation, Michelle intends to pursue further studies in graduate school while continuing her work with the UCLA linguistics and psychology labs during her gap year.

Anna Tong — Anna graduated in June 2024, double majoring in Linguistics & Computer Science and Cognitive Science. During her senior year, she completed a study on the language of trauma, linguistically analyzing Ukrainian trauma narratives as a UCLA/Keck Humanistic Inquiry Undergraduate Research Fellow. Her present research interest focuses on applications of language and computation in the context of studying trauma and trauma healing. She will continue this research through the Cognitive Science MSc program at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics beginning Fall 2024. Following this, she looks forward to further pursuing this research through a PhD.

Kendall Vanderwouw — Kendall graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Linguistics & Anthropology and a minor in Scandinavian Studies. After finishing high school at 16, she began her 3-year-long studies in Linguistics at UCLA, focusing on Sociolinguistics. Her thesis tested the roots of mutual intelligibility in Scandinavian languages, with an emphasis on native Swedish speakers. Kendall conducted additional research in intercultural communication during her two study abroad programs (in Denmark and on Semester at Sea). Next year, she will begin her Master’s studies in Applied Cultural Analysis at Lund University in Sweden.

Zhuying (Emily) Gong — Zhuying (Emily) Gong graduated in Spring 2024 with a double major in Linguistics and Mathematics of Computation. In her senior year, she worked closely with Dr. David Goldstein and applied a Bayesian mixture model on Greek data to detect language contacts. She will be working full time postgrad but hopes to eventually pursue a PhD in linguistics.

Mario Peng Lee — Mario Peng Lee graduated with a B.A. in Linguistics & Computer Science, a double major in Psychology, and a minor in Data Science Engineering. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, he collaborated across multiple disciplines, focusing on the ethical development of AI. His honors thesis, under Maura O’Leary, led to the Diverse Names Generator, combating bias in linguistic examples. This work was presented at the LSA conference, where he received the Linguistics Travel and Research Award. Mario also served as an Undergraduate Research Scholar and editor for the Undergraduate Research Journal of Psychology.

Kelly Eun — Kelly graduated in June 2024 with a B.A. in Applied Linguistics. Since learning about sentence processing models in LING 132, she has been interested in language comprehension and the interface between syntax and semantics. Using self-paced incremental reading tasks, her senior research project examined how bilingualism could affect parsing decisions on sentences with local ambiguity. Kelly hopes to introduce others to linguistics, paying forward the knowledge and support she received as a student here. With some time now on her hands, she plans to brush up on playing the piano and alto saxophone.

Michelle Johnson — Michelle graduated with a B.A. in linguistics with a minor in ELTS with German. During her senior year, she worked closely with professor and chair, Dr. Megha Sundara, as a member of UCLA’s Language Acquisition Lab. Her honors thesis builds upon Dr. Sundara’s previous research on the recognition of morphological suffixes by English-learning infants with a focus on investigating whether there is a difference in the acquisition of inflectional and derivational morphemes. She plans to remain in contact with the Language Acquisition Lab during her gap year before eventually pursuing a PhD in linguistics.
Madeleine Kostant-Greeley — Madeleine graduated in June 2023 with a double major in Applied Linguistics and Political Science and a minor in Spanish. Her favorite subject in linguistics is phonology, and she wrote an experimental honors thesis on phonological theory. After applying to law schools this fall, she will spend her gap year teaching in Madrid via a government program.
Ashley Ghodsian — Ashley graduated in Spring 2023 as a UCLA Linguistics Departmental Scholar, with her B.A. in Linguistics and Computer Science and her M.A. in Linguistics. While at UCLA, she worked on independent research projects in syntax and bilingualism for two years and started working on an acquisition and language processing project in her final quarter. She is also a proud member of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Inc., where she has gained much of her community leadership experience in her native Los Angeles. She hopes to tie together her passions for language, problem-solving, and social justice issues in any work she does in the future.

Shalinee Maitra — Shalinee Maitra graduated in December 2022 with a degree in Linguistics and Computer Science. She worked as a research assistant in the Linguistics department for two years, contributing to computational and language acquisition projects. Her senior research project focused on how children might acquire Spanish word order. In addition to linguistics, she was involved with the Bruin Film Society and the Bruin Democrats at UCLA. She is currently back home in Boston and plans to pursue a PhD in linguistics in the near future.Yue Chen — Yue Chen is a recent graduate from UCLA, holding a degree in Linguistics and Psychology. During her two-year adventures as a research assistant in the Language Processing Lab, she actively participated in eye-tracking and sentence-processing projects. Under the guidance of Professor Harris, her senior research project delved into adult comprehension of personal pronouns, utilizing eye-tracking data. Outside the realm of language-related endeavors, Yue finds solace in reading classic literature and embarking on invigorating hiking adventures.
Roxane Martin — Originally from San Diego, Roxane Martin came to UCLA excited to pursue her passion in Linguistics and Computer Science. Supplemented by a minor in Mathematics, Roxane directed her focus on Computational Linguistics research, completing a project on applying Probabilistic Finite State Tree Automata to Long Distance Licensing Structures. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in Natural Language Processing as a Software Engineer.

Trevor Htoon — Trevor has a wide variety of interests in Linguistics (and even in other fields). His strongest interests are in Historical, Socio-, and Anthropological Linguistics (although he is interested in other domains such as Computational, Applied, etc.). Within these fields, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Dialectology are what he enjoys focusing on. His specialties lie mostly within Asian and Indo-European languages (but his degree is just in Linguistics).Guoran Zhang — Guoran Zhang is a Chinese-English bilingual speaker. She is a recent graduate from UCLA who began her journey in the field of Linguistics after her sophomore year, and now is driven to pursue a master’s degree.