I am a Ph.D. candidate in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland, College Park, advised by Ekaterina Sudina. Previously, I completed part of my doctoral studies under a laCaixa fellowship, working with the late Mike Long and Steven Ross. I hold an M.A. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Fulbright scholar), where I was advised by Ana Maria Schwartz Caballero. During my graduate studies, I also worked with Sharon Unsworth and Chantal van Dijk at Radboud University, and assisted Yasmeen Faroqi-Shah's Aphasia Research Center as part of the Bilingual Assessment Research lab.

My research focuses on cognitive individual differences in second language acquisition, particularly the interplay between explicit and implicit knowledge systems, working memory, executive functions, and language aptitude. I adopt a cognitive approach grounded in memory systems and learner variability. My dissertation work encompasses a meta-analysis synthesizing aptitude research across explicit and implicit learning contexts. 

Beyond my individual differences work, I have a strong interest in AI for Less Commonly Taught Languages and developmental sequences. To this effect, I have been working with Frederick J. Poole at Michigan State University to leverage my expertise and apply it to Artificial Intelligence, with the goal of providing open-access resources based on experimental research for people to work on their Catalan independently. I am also exploring applications of learner corpus research to identify developmental sequences in Catalan acquisition. Efforts that I first undertook during my undergraduate work (Toda-Cosi, 2021).

I am committed to open science and methodological rigor in SLA research. I believe that theoretically-grounded practices require valid, reliable measurement tools and transparent research practices. Without solid instrumentation and replicable methods, we risk building knowledge on unstable foundations.