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Congratulations to CASLS Graduate Research Assistant Misaki Kato for winning the University of Oregon’s Lokey Doctoral Science Fellowship for the 2019-20 academic year! This prestigious fellowship is awarded each year to only four UO doctoral students with strong academic records and demonstrated promise for outstanding research careers. Misaki is a student in the Linguistics department and has been working on a project to analyze learner interactions while playing the game ECOPOD, which CASLS developed several years ago.

Misaki also works in the UO Speech Perception and Production Lab with her dissertation advisor, Associate Professor Melissa Baese-Berk. Here she pursues her interest in the production and perception of non-native speech, how people acquire a second language language, how they become able to produce and perceive non-native sounds and successfully communicate in the second language. Looking forward to her final graduate year, Misaki says, “I’m happy to have time to work solely on my dissertation research and be able to explore options for post-doc positions and have some time to apply for grants for post-doctoral fellowships.”

CASLS director Julie Sykes says, “Although we’re sad that Misaki will not be part of our team next year, we’re delighted that she has received this award and wish her the best with her future research. Her work at CASLS has allowed us to look into new lines of research inquiry that would not have been possible any other way.”