In The News

RuCCS Executive Council Member Mark Baker inducted as Fellow in the Linguistic Society of America

RuCCS Affiliate and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics Dr. Mark Baker was inducted as a Fellow in the Linguistics Society of America (LSA). Baker is one of nine linguists selected for the 2021 Class of Fellows
by the LSA. Members of the Society who have made distinguished contributions to the discipline may be recognized and inducted as Fellows, including scholarly excellence, service to speech communities,
teaching and mentoring excellence, and more. See Baker alongside the eight other Fellows here.

 

 

 

 

 

RuCCS Executive Council Member Kasia Bieszczad awarded $1.7M Grant from The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for project on auditory systems

RuCCS Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Psychology Kasia Bieszczad was awarded a $1.7M grant through the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) for her project, "Molecular Epigenetic Mechanisms that Transform the Auditory System for Learning and Memory." The project aims to investigate epigenetic neural mechanisms that can ensure meaningful sounds are faithfully and adaptively represented in the adult auditory brain. The NIDCD scored Bieszczad's proposal in the 4th percentile.

 

 

 

RuCCS Executive Council Member Kristen Syrett awarded $267K National Science Foundation Grant for Cognitive Science project

RuCCS Affiliate and Associate Professor of Linguistics Kristen Syrett was awarded a $267K grant through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Linguistics Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. The grant goes towards funding Syrett's project entitled "Cross-categorical context dependence: Bridging developmental, experimental, and theoretical perspectives" starting January 2021 for three years.

 

 

 

RuCCS Director John McGann quoted in New York Times and New Yorker articles

Within the span of one week, RuCCS Director John McGann was mentioned and cited in two New York
Times and New Yorker articles on the topic of sense of smell! One feature article in the NYT, "What Can Covid-19 Teach Us About the Mysteries of Smell?" quotes McGann's research on the myth of poor
sense of smell in humans via his 2017 paper, "Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth." The
other New Yorker article, "How to Make Sense of Scents," refers to this same paper and even dubs it
a "provocative" piece for "suggest[ing] that [humans are] better smellers than we’ve gotten credit for."

 

 

 

 

RuCCS alumna Malihe Alikhani awarded Google Grant: exploreCSR

Congratulations to RuCCS alumna Malihe Alikhani on receiving a Google exploreCSR Grant! The grant will be used to encourage computing research among underrepresented groups. Alikhani is is now an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. She states, "We will hold workshops and mentoring sessions to empower students to create technologies that best serve their communities and help them succeed in research and graduate studies by fostering an engaging and supportive community and helping them learn practical skills."