Dr. Bergelson smiles in front of a grey-painted wooden wall

Elika Bergelson

Principal Investigator

Dr. Bergelson is an Associate Professor in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology (personal page). Dr. Bergelson received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she first became interested in infant word-learning, Her training is in psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science. 

Federica smiles in front of a tree and brick building

Federica Bulgarelli

 Post-Doc ALUM

Federica finished a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Language Science from Penn State University (personal page). She is interested in how learners figure out what to do with variability stemming from different sources in their environment, such as different speakers or different languages. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Buffalo.

Stephan smiles while standing on a smooth stone sidewalk

Stephan MEylan

Post-Doc

Stephan splits his time between the Bergelson Lab and the Computational Psycholinguistics Lab at MIT working on computational models of language acquisition and language processing (personal page). He recently completed a PhD in the Computational Cognitive Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

Carla stands next to a bed of red, white, orange, and yellow tulips.

Carla Fernandez

Post-Doc Alum

Carla graduated from Penn State with a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Language Science. She is interested in language processing differences in response to speaker variability. She is also deeply interested in the neural correlates of vocabulary acquisition in infants.

Charlotte smiles in front of a small waterfall

Charlotte Moore

PhD ALUM

Charlotte received a B.A. in psychology and linguistics from the University of Ottawa, and went on to do her Master’s in Linguistics at the same university, continuing work she began as an undergrad on speech perception in toddlers. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Concordia with Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein.

Shannon holds her amazing dog Shuri while standing near an athletic field

Shannon Dailey

PhD ALUM

Shannon is a PhD student studying developmental psychology. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 with a major in psychology and a minor in music. She began working with Dr. Bergelson in 2015, first as lab manager on the SEEDLingS team at the University of Rochester, and then as the BLAB manager at Duke. She is now a postdoc at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy!

Erin Campbell

PhD Alum

Erin graduated from Towson University in 2018 with a BA in speech language pathology, deaf studies, and disability studies. Erin wants to better understand language processing and acquisition for children with sensory impairments. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University with Dr.  Naomi Caselli and Dr. Amy Lieberman.

Lilli Righter

Lab Manager

Lilli graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a B.A. in Linguistics in 2020. There, she worked on research looking at infants’ acquisition of long-distance syntactic dependencies and wrote a thesis about early verb learning. She is thrilled to join BLAB and learn more about language development.

Stephanie, with a black bob and a white dress, smiles in front of Buckingham Palace.

Stephanie Zaragoza

Former Research Assistant ’25

Stephanie is a Senior psychology student at Harvard. She is interested in clinical psychology, but also in developmental psych and learning disorders. 

Sarah, a white woman with dark hair, kneels and grins by a hibiscus bush with one of the bright red flowers "tucked" behind her ear.

Sarah Latzke

Former Research Assistant ’25

Sarah is a Senior undergraduate student at Harvard from Columbus, Ohio studying Psychology and Linguistics. She is interested in clinical and developmental psychology, and she has a particular curiosity for how first and second languages are acquired.

Daisja grins with a beach background, wearing a fluffy jacket and cool sunglasses.

Daisja Honorable

Former Research Assistant ’25

Daisja is a Senior at Duke majoring in Neuroscience with minors in Chemistry and Spanish. She is interested in brain development and language acquisition, especially since she wants to work with children in the future and has been learning Spanish since 2nd grade. 

Serena has dark hair and beams in front of a tree.

Serena Raj

Former Research Assistant ’25

Serena is a Senior at Duke who is majoring in Psychology with a double minor in Biology and Chemistry on the pre-med track. She is interested in language acquisition in infants and more specifically how a child’s environment can impact their neural development and linguistic abilities!

A sunny selfie of Sam smiling. She wears a white tshirt and has curly red hair.

Samantha Chaney

Former Research Assistant ’24

Samantha is a recent graduate of Duke University, who double-majored in Neuroscience and Linguistics with a minor in Psychology. She is specifically interested in how music and language impact someone’s perception of their surroundings. 

Casey stands in a field of wildflowers with storm clouds in the back.She has light brown hair and a blue shirt.

Casey Carrow

Former Visiting Scholar

Casey was a visiting scholar from Vanderbilt University. Casey graduated with high honors from Vanderbilt University in 2024, receiving a B.S. in Child Development and Cognitive Studies and a minor in Quantitative Methods. 

Bella leans on her hand taking a selfie and smiles softly wearing a pink sweater.

Bella Liu

Former Research Assistant ’24

Bella is a recent graduate of Duke University, who studied psychology with a minor in Latin and chemistry. She is particularly interested in seeing how bi/multilingualism and different cultural backgrounds can impact the development of language learning in children, as well as how adults translate baby language. 

Jessi stands in front of a gray wall, smiling and wearing a grey blazer. She has straight dark hair/

Jessica Steil

Former Visiting Scholar

Jessica graduated from the University of Tübingen (Germany) with an M.S. degree in psychology. As a PhD candidate at the University of Tübingen, and a visiting scholar with Bergelson Lab, she is interested in infants’ language acquisitions and how young children think about their first words. Jessica enjoys hiking, books, and spending time with babies.

Natalie stands grinning in front of the ornate doors of the Duke chapel. She wears a blue button-down shirt and has dark hair nd brown eyes.

Natalie Chou

Former Research Assistant ’23

Natalie is a recent graduate of Duke University where she pursued her academic interests in both documentary studies and child health. After Duke, she hopes to attend medical school and continue working with children through healthcare and research. She is most interested in child language development, particularly in regards to multilingualism.

Sophie beams at the camera while sitting on a hammock.. She has tan skin and long brown hair. She wears a black top and jean shorts. There is a leafy tree in the bckground.

Sophie Barry 

Former Research Assistant ’22

Sophie is a recent graduate who studied Psychology, Cultural Anthropology, and Spanish. She is interested in how infants learn words given the variability of input from their environments, specifically in the sense of hearing different accents. She is now a marketer at Michael Kors.

Catherine sits in front of a window smiling. She has curly brown hair and wears a white shirt,

Catherine Byun

Former Research Assistant ’24

Catherine is a recent graduate of Duke who studied biology and psychology with hopes of going to medical school after she graduates. She is interested in how children’s environments affect language acquisition during early childhood and how this intersects with the natural biological components of language learning.

Anika Pawlak

Former Research Assistant ’25

Anika is a Senior at Duke University!

Cai has black hair and glasses. She wears a collared white shirt with a bow at the collar and a brown paid skirt. She stands against a bright pink wall, holding a rotary phone to her ear.

CaiMiao Liu

Former Research Assistant 

Caimiao attends Duke University studying psychology and sociology. She is interested in how children learn to distinguish the nuances among very similar words through early interactions as well as how they respond differently to multilingual environments. 

Jasmine smiles at the camera in a close-up selfie. She has natural hair pulled back in a bun, brown eyes, and wears a grey sweater and a necklace.

Jasmine PflePsen

Former Research Assistant ’22

Jasmine is a recent graduate in Linguistics and minoring in Russian and French. She is most interested in multilingual language acquisition and how language acquisition interacts with literacy. She is now a Learning Support researcher at the American Institute for Research.

Olivia takes a selfie in a softly lit room. She has sandy hair and freckles and wears a denim jacket.

Olivia Leggio

Former Research Assistant ’22

Olivia is a recent Duke graduate who majored in linguistics and computer science. She is now a programmer in the Neurology department at UNC. 

Taylor is laughing and looking at the camera. She wears a grey and white t-shirt, has light skin, and curly light brown hair. The clue blue sky and some grass are visible in the background.

Taylor Horowitz

Former Research Assistant ’22

Taylor is a recent graduate with a degree in neuroscience. In the future, she hopes to attend medical school. She currently serves as a clinical research coordinator at Cohen Children’s Hospital.

Jing stands in a food market.

Jing Liu

Former Research Assistant ’22

Jing is an alum majoring in psychology and statistics. She is interested in how children acquire their first words and categorize them into their existing network of knowledge.

Jen is pictured hiking in a snowy environment.

Janani Ramadurai

Former Research Assistant ’21

Jen is a master’s student at UNC. In undergrad, she double majored in Linguistics and Neuroscience and minored in Computer Science. She is most interested in understanding how children acquire language and hopes to apply that knowledge to speech therapy in the future.

Hallie stands on a wooden pier

Hallie Garrison

Former Research Associate

Hallie graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2013 with a B.A. in Sociology. She moved to Boston to work in childcare for three years, where she developed an interest in infant language acquisition. Hallie likes books, bikes, and beautiful places!

Aahnix poses for a picture on a chair, facing the sunset.

Aahnix Bathurst

Former Project Coordinator

Aahnix graduated from Amherst College in 2019 with a BA in German. He would sneak over to Umass Amherst to take linguistics courses nearly every semester. He loves learning about almost anything brain-related.

Juliette Jiminez

Former Research Intern

Juliette was a visiting high school researcher for the summer of 2022!

JEssica MArlow

Research Assistant ’20

Jessica was a senior majoring in Global Health and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, concentrating in Chinese, with a minor in Cultural Anthropology. She is interested in the role of parent-child interactions in child development as well as bilingualism.

Contact Us

Interested in contacting us? We’re here!

Harvard University, Department of Psychology

617-384-0001 

bergelsonlab@fas.harvard.edu