SLaB Lab

Current Team Members

Quentin Zhen QIN

Quentin Zhen QIN 秦震 Ph.D.

Principal Investigator

hmzqin@ust.hk; CV

Personal Website

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6117-7809

Quentin is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also Associate Director of ​Center for Chinese Linguistics and a faculty associate of Center for Aging Science, HKUST. He got his Ph.D degree in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas. Prior to joining the faculty at HKUST, he worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Center for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.


Jiayu Liang

Jiayu LIANG 梁家瑜 (BA: Shandong U)

Lab Manager & Research Assistant

hmjyliang@ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

Personal Website

Jiayu holds a BA in English from Shandong University. Her research interests focus on the production and perception of non-native languages, as well as the cross-domain transfer effects between music and language experience. For her undergraduate thesis, Jiayu employed eye-tracking methodology to investigate how Mandarin speakers' musical aptitude influences their perception and production of English vowels. Currently, she is involved in an eye-tracking study examining L2 learners' perceptual learning and consolidation of English lexical stress.


Jeremy, Yin To CHUI

Jeremy, Yin To CHUI 徐彥韜 (BA: CUHK; MA: PolyU; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

ytchuiac@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2169-086X

Jeremy graduated with an MA degree in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language from HK PolyU. He is interested in speech perception as well as the cognitive and computational mechanisms behind perceptual learning. Currently, he is working on whether, and to what extent, younger and older adults make statistical inferences (e.g., distributional information, word-referent co-occurrences) in the implicit perceptual learning L2 lexical tone categories. His previous MPhil project studied the statistical learning of Mandarin lexical tones and how individual differences played a role in learning. Jeremy's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.


Yuqi Wang

Yuqi WANG 王宇琪 (BA: Tianjin U; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

ywangqi@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1794-9747​

Yuqi graduated from Tianjin University with a BA Degree in English and from HKUST with an MPhil Degree in Humanities. She is interested in aging and the bilingual effect on cognition. She is now working on how language and other experiences (e.g., learning and using more than one language, music training, etc.) benefit one's cognitive abilities (e.g., attention and memory). Her MPhil thesis studied how individual bilingual experiences of younger Cantonese-English speakers influence the attentional control ability in a Forced-attention Dichotic Listening Task of Cantonese tones. Yuqi's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.


Kangdi Liu

Kangdi LIU 劉康迪 (BA: NENU; MA: Nankai; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

kliubc@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

Personal Website

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-1548-4040​

Kangdi graduated from Nankai University with an MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. She is interested in phonetics and psycholinguistics, especially focusing on Chinese tones. Currently, her research examines how sleep, including both nocturnal sleep and daytime naps, facilitates non-native tone learning (i.e., Cantonese) through memory consolidation in older Mandarin-speaking adults. This work aims to understand the memory encoding, consolidation, and forgetting in aging brains to develop interventions against memory decline. Kangdi's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.


Past Members and Alumni

Cindy, Rui JIN

· Cindy, Rui JIN 金蕊 (Senior Research Assistant, 2021-2022)

Cindy is currently a Ph.D student in Psychology at the University of Florida.

Ruofan Wu

· Ruofan WU 吳若繁 (Research Assistant, 2022-2023)

Ruofan is currently a Ph.D student at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Susu Lai

· Susu LAI 賴素素 (Research Assistant, 2023-2024)

Susu is currently a lecturer at Guangzhou College of Technology and Business.

· Yuxin ZHU (MGCS Research Assistant, 2021-2022)

· Martin, Yu Ting LEE (RPG Research Assistant, 2021)

· Minzhi GONG (Research Assistant, 2020)

· Weijie TAN (Research Assistant, 2019)


Opportunity

If you’re interested in joining our research team as an RA or Post-doc, please send your CV, together with writing samples or research proposal, to the P.I. at hmzqin@ust.hk. We will NOT respond to your email if you don't attach writing samples or proposals.

1. Priority of opportunity will be given to those with a strong background in psycholinguistics or who work on memory consolidation and/or aging in tone learning.

2. We are NOT interested in applicants whose research is language pedagogy-oriented.