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.
Ka Keung (Leon) Lee
MA Student
Leon joined SFU as a Linguistics Master's student. Before that, he studied and worked at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Leon is interested in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and multilingualism. More specifically, he wants to learn whether bilingual speakers/ polyglots would perceive and produce sounds and process sentences differently; and how acquiring more than one language would benefit the speakers’ cognitive function. During his ‘me’ time, Leon likes doing sports, playing music, and practicing calligraphy.
Fact: If something is absolutely to Leon’s taste, it is (very likely to be) obsolete as well.
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 Medical Informatics Lab at Seoul National University and in A Growing Experience Lab 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
MA 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!