Ellen Lau, Ph.D. (2009-2012)

Ellen's research focuses on language comprehension, and she has a particular interest in the role of prediction in sentence processing. She received her BS in Psychology from Michigan State University, where she worked with Fernanda Ferreira, and her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Maryland, where she worked with Colin Phillips and David Poeppel. In her graduate work she used behavioral and neuroimaging measures to examine how predictive contextual information facilitates processing, particularly in cases that are associated with N400 effects in ERP. From a methodological perspective, Ellen is especially interested in the possibility of more directly combining data from EEG, MEG, and fMRI. As a post-doctoral research fellow from August 2009 to July 2012, she worked with Dr. Kuperberg, Dr. Holcomb, and Dr. Matti Hamalainen (MGH) on several projects that integrated these techniques in examining language processing both in healthy adults and in populations with disorders such as dyslexia and schizophrenia. She is now a Faculty member in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland.