Our Team
Xizi Deng
PhD Student
Xizi (Danielle) Deng joined the Department of Linguistics at SFU as a graduate student in 2017 and completed a taught program at Chinese University of Hong Kong before that. Her research interests lie in speech perception, especially the perception of tone and tone sandhi, and also in Theoretical Phonology. Xizi is also working on projects that explore how humans' language ability is correlated with their musical ability. Besides Linguistics, Xizi is also a fan of science fictions and sci-fi movies.
Ha Eun Shim
MA Student
Ha Eun holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. She joined the Language Development Lab as a Master's student in Linguistics. Before coming to SFU, Ha Eun worked as a research assistant in at Seoul National University and in at Ewha Womans University.
Her research interests in Linguistics include psycholinguistics, phonetics, and phonology. Specifically, she is passionate about interdisciplinary research that bridges speech and dialogue styles with Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Outside of academia, Ha Eun enjoys traveling and photographing scenic landscapes.
Ivan Fong
PHD Student
Ivan graduated as a Diploma in Linguistics student at UBC in 2020. During his study there, he worked as a research assistant at the Speech in Context Lab, mainly for Khia Johnson and Molly Babel. He is mostly interested in investigating the languages that he is the most familiar with (English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean). He is particularly interested in language transfer and his immediate focus is on Cantonese tone merger and syllable fusion. Fun Fact: Before he discovered his love and career in Linguistics, he completed his B.Sc at UBC as a first degree!