Category: Alumni News

After defending his dissertation over the summer, Tom Roberts (Ph.D. 2021) began a postdoc in September in the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, working with Reinhard Muskens on modeling abductive reasoning in natural language. He reports an exciting and cross-disciplinary environment at the ILLC with semanticists of all stripes, and is adjusting to life in the Old World, speaking Dutch, and biking without the constant threat of mortal peril. At the time of press, he has not yet determined whether it is possible to subsist exclusively on a diet of hagelslag and poffertjes, but this remains an area of active research.

An update from Jed Pizarro-Guevara (Ph.D. 2020), currently a postdoc at UMass-Amherst: “Now that things are sorta back to normal(ish), I’m getting to know the department here at UMass and I’m really enjoying my time here. I’m working with Brian Dillon and an RA from the University of the Philippines – Diliman and we’re currently looking at interference effects when Tagalog comprehenders process reflexive dependencies. Outside of work, I’ve been experimenting with how to veganize Filipino dishes. I have to say, jackfruit adobo is pretty good — but it still doesn’t beat pork adobo!”

UCSC Linguistics alum Ekaterina Kravtchenko (MA, 2013) has accepted a position as a Data Scientist working in research and development at the fraud detection company Fraugster (Berlin). Congratulations, Ekaterina!

UCSC Linguistics alum Shayne Sloggett (B.A., 2010) has accepted the position of Experimental Officer in Psycholinguistics at the University of York (U.K.). Congratulations, Shayne!

UCSC Language Studies alum Kevin Sanders (B.A., 2018) reports that he will begin a master’s program in computational linguistics in September at the University of Washington. He writes of the two-year program,

It covers computer science concepts, programming techniques, statistics, and linguistic theory. I’m excited to start! I’m happy to have an opportunity to carry the knowledge and experience I gained from the UCSC linguistics department with me to new environs.

Congratulations, Kevin!

This year’s Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni Award Luncheon (Sat. 4/27) featured our very own Jason Merchant (University of Chicago, Ph.D. 1999), who was introduced by his adviser Jim McCloskey, and gave a spirited acceptance speech reflecting on his career and the importance of graduate education.  Besides his faculty advisors, Jim, Sandy, and Bill, and his graduate cohort, Jason mentioned former Department Manager Tanya Honig as being instrumental in guiding him through his graduate career.

From left to right: Junko Ito, Armin Mester, Jason Merchant, Jaye Padgett, Jim McCloskey, and acting Humanities Dean Karen Bassi, from whom Jason took Ancient Greek in his time at UCSC.

UCSC alum Jason Merchant (PhD, 1999) will be honored on campus on April 27 as one of the recipients of the 2019 Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni Award for his contributions to the field and his community. Click here for more details about the award. Congratulations, Jason!