People

Dr. Rochelle Newman

Chair, Dept. of Hearing & Speech Sciences
Associate Director, Maryland Language Science Center

Katie Nguyen

Lab Manager

Katie joined the Language Development Lab after graduating with a B.S.A in Neuroscience and a minor in Asian American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2023. Although her interests in language development and perception are primarily with humans, she is excited to observe how canines are similar (or different) to humans and their understanding of language.

Amy Gionfriddo

Graduate Assistant

Amy obtained their B.M. in Classical Voice Performance from the University of Miami in May 2015 and a B.A. in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor in Linguistics from Utah State University in May 2023. They are currently pursuing an M.A. in Hearing and Speech Sciences in the Speech-Language Pathology Program. Amy's research interests include acoustic phonetics, principles of motor learning, and gender cues in speech perception.

Amritha Mallikarjun

Amritha Mallikarjun was a PhD student under Dr. Rochelle Newman from 2014-2020, where her interest in speech perception and auditory processing in dogs drove the formation of the Canine Language Perception Lab in 2017. She graduated with her PhD in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science in 2020. Her thesis research focused on the impact of ambient noise in the environment on speech perception and word learning in infants and dogs. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, working on studies involving canine cognition, olfaction and scent detection at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center.

Emily Shroads

Emily Shroads was a previous lab manager for the Language Development and Perception Labs from 2015-2017. She was also the co-founder of the Canine Language Perception Lab. Prior to her role as a lab manager at UMD, she graduated with a BA in Linguistics and a BA in Computer Science from Duke University. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto.