Canonical Proportion as a Phonological Index
A longitudinal cohort study connecting preschoolers' spontaneous speech to their phonological development.
1st author · Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (in press)Research
I trained as a cognitive scientist before I wrote production code. I study how people learn — and how the tools we build them with can teach as well as they ship.
Learning-forward developer tools
Most developer tools optimize for output: ship the code, close the ticket, accept the AI's suggestion. I'm independently researching a different goal — tools that are learning-forward, where the software you build with also builds you.
My cognitive-science training says the best learning environments scaffold understanding rather than shortcut it. Agentic AI tools sit right at that fork: they can turn developers into passive approvers of code they don't understand, or they can make an AI's reasoning legible enough that every interaction leaves you more capable than the last.
Waddl is my testbed for the second path. It renders an AI agent's reasoning as it works — narrating decisions and surfacing tradeoffs — so a developer follows the why, not just the diff. The research question underneath: can we measure real skill growth in people who build alongside AI, and design the tools that maximize it?
That question — how people develop genuine capability with AI rather than dependence on it — is the throughline connecting my published work on human learning to everything I build now.
Peer-reviewed, first author
Automated Vocal Analysis
Can automated vocal analysis methods predict speech-language development? Full paper and poster.
1st author · Cognitive Science Society Proceedings 2025TEDx — “Building a Safer Headspace”
A TED talk on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy — chosen out of 50 applicants.
3,300+ views on YouTube (2021)Where I trained
Speech & Cognitive Development Laboratory, UCLA
Speech-development research — machine learning, statistics, and mixed-methods analysis of how children acquire language. (Jan 2024 – present)
Neural Engineering & Computation (Kao) Lab, UCLA
NLP and speech-neuroprosthesis research — decoding language from neural signal. (Mar 2024 – Jan 2025)
B.S. Cognitive Science (specialization in Computer Science), minor in Data Science Engineering — UCLA, 2025.
See full resume (PDF)