I am a first-year PhD student in language science at the University of California, Irvine, primarily working with Dr. Xin Xie and Dr. Connor Mayer.  My research interest focuses on computational models of adaptive language processing and the neural computation of speech perception. I also use EEG to understand the downstream consequences of prediction failure in sentence processing. 

In my last life, I was a Mandarin-Arabic translator (Toufig is my Arabic name!). I translated two books. I also taught Arabic as a second language once. Motivated by many years of experience, I have also conducted research in Arabic second language learning and Arabic NLP. I look forward to continuing my research in Arabic applied linguistics in the years to come. 

Contact me via the email address on the left to talk to me about research!

October 24 I will travel to Society of neurobiology of language in Brisbane  to present my research proposal in prediction failure in the sandbox poster session.

July 24   I won a student travel award for my work with Dr. Xin Xie titled "Modeling cue re-weighting in dimension-based statistical learning". I will present the paper as a talk at the Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference 2024.

July 24  I will present my paper "Structured Variability of British English Intonation" at HILS.

June 24  I will present my paper "Perceptual Learning and tonogenesis: a behavioral and computational study" at LingO and IMPRS. [link to recorded poster presentation]