Dr. Wei Lai
Title: Assistant Professor
Office Location: PSY 409
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1:00-2:30pm (and by appointment) (in-person and virtual)
Office Hours Zoom Room:
E-mail: wei.lai@csulb.edu
Research website:
Education:
PhD in Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, 2021
MA in Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University, 2015
BA in Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University, 2012
Teaching/Research Interests:
My research interests lie at the intersection of phonetics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, including speech perception and production, sound change, and the social-cognitive mechanisms involved in processing sociolinguistic variation. I also have a long-standing interest in the production and perception of lexical tones and speech prosody.
Before joining Á½ÐÔÉ«ÎçÒ¹, I spent several years in industry as a language engineer on the Bedrock Data Team at Amazon Web Services. This experience informs my interest in teaching computational linguistics, advocating for linguists’ contributions to the tech industry, and advising students on navigating linguistic careers in big tech.
Courses Taught:
- LING 100: Nature of Language
- LING 424: Laboratory Phonetics
