Lab Director
Melanie Soderstrom, Professor
Dr. Soderstrom has been doing research and teaching in infant speech perception and early grammatical development for more than fifteen years. She came to the University of Manitoba in 2008 from a research position at Brown University. In 2023, she became the Head of the Department of Psychology..
Graduate Students
Sana Fekrazad
Sana is a PhD student in Developmental Psychology in the Baby Language Lab. Her research investigates the speech caregivers use with their infants and infants’ preferences for new and familiar items. Additionally, she co-advises undergraduate Honours students, supporting them with their data collection, analysis, and thesis writing.
Megan Gornik
Megan is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology. She is currently completing her residency within the Clinical Healthy Psychology program. Her doctoral research focuses on maternal anxiety and how it affects communication and emotional expression between mothers and their preschool-aged children when interacting.
Isabelle Hadley
Isabelle is entering her third year of the School Psychology Master’s program (thesis stream). Her thesis focuses on the impact of stress in the perinatal period on infant cognitive and language development. Additionally, Isabelle aids in recruitment efforts with the Healthy Human Development database.
Lab Coordinator
More information coming soon!
Research Assistants
Feyisayo Dosumu
Feyisayo is a Research Assistant within the lab and recently graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Psychology in Spring 2026. She will continue working as annotator on the Maternal Stress Study and other projects within the lab.
Marlea Sabo
This year Marlea completed her undergraduate honours thesis. under the co-supervision of Dr. Soderstrom and Isabelle. Her thesis aimed to examine the effect of maternal stress on maternal and infant gesturing, with a focus on early parent-child interactions. Marlea was accepted into the Applied Behaviour Analysis graduate program which she will be starting in the fall.
Rose Gumber
Rose is a Research Assistant who supports a range of research initiatives and ongoing projects within the lab. She recently graduated with an Honours degree in Psychology and will begin graduate studies in Physiotherapy this fall.
Cailin Douglas
Cailin is pursuing a BSC. Honours Degree in Psychology with the goal of becoming a Speech Language Pathologist. She will be starting her Honours thesis in the fall under the supervision of Dr. Soderstrom. Cailin is currently testing infants’ preference for infant-directed speech in European languages and supporting Isabelle’s Maternal Stress Study.
Houra Goharrokhi
Houra joined the Baby Language Lab in May 2026. She was awarded the summer Undergraduate Research Award and is working on annotating recordings of Farsi/Persian learning infants in Iran, focusing on the nature of conversational turns between infants and mothers.
Kesslyn Lagasse
Kesslyn has been a Research Assistant in the lab since April 2026. She is currently working as an annotator.
Harjot Bhamra
Harjot has been a Research Assistant in the lab since April 2026. She is currently working as an annotator and will be starting her thesis within the lab in the fall.
Volunteers
More information coming soon!
Recent Alumni
Sara Montazeri
Sara is a Ph.D. graduate in Developmental Psychology. Her research focused on Persian infant-directed speech.
Erica Pouteau
Erica graduated from the University of Manitoba with her BSc. Honours Degree in Microbiology in June 2024. Erica has research experience in the MicroStats lab in the Dept. of Microbiology. Erica joined the lab as a lab coordinator to advance her understanding and experiences working in psychology, as she is interested in a career in Genetic Counselling.
Edidiong Akpan
Edidiong is a recent graduate of the University of Manitoba. In the lab she worked on Megan’s anxiety study by helping annotate files.
Rebeca Urizar
Rebeca joined the lab in November 2022. Rebeca completed her Undergraduate Thesis work in Spring 2025. She is currently a graduate student in Developmental Psychology with the Young Minds Research lab. Rebeca also aided in testing babies’ IDS preference and training research assistants.
Maia Kullman
Maia graduated from the psychology honours program in Spring 2025. She worked as a research assistant in the lab on the Maternal Smartphone Use study.
Katerina Porteous
Kat joined the Baby Language Lab in January 2024. She completed her undergraduate thesis spring 2025. She aided in running participants for PhD candidate, Megan Gornik’s Maternal Anxiety Study and assisting with the annotating process.
Ludivine Glas
Ludivine joined the lab in January 2021 as postdoctoral researcher, after a teaching and research assistant position at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis (France). She has PhD in language science at the University of Lyon 2 and studied biology and ethology at Montpellier 2 and Rennes 1 university for her undergraduate and graduate studies. She is interested in language development, especially early words acquisition, children everyday environment and methods to measure early vocabulary production and context.
Cindy Le
Cindy joined the lab in the beginning of 2020 as a research assistant and has completed her Honours thesis with Dr. Soderstrom as her advisor. Her interests include Developmental Psychology and Linguistics. Since completing her undergraduate degree, she began her master’s in Speech Language Pathology.
Yejin Cha
Yejin joined the lab in November 2022. Yejin is pursuing a B.A. Honours in Psychology and will be starting her thesis with Dr. Soderstrom as her advisor.
Grace Zhou
Grace joined the lab in Fall 2021 and split her time between being the office assistant for ManyBabies, and the perceptual studies Lab Coordinator. She completed her B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology at McGill University and hopes to continue her education by pursuing a master’s in Clinical or Counselling Psychology.
Cara Allardice
Cara joined the lab in fall 2021. is currently in the final year of her B.A. (Honours) in Psychology. She completed her last year of B.A. Honours degree in Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Soderstrom. She also recently received the NSERC grant which will be used to help her to pursue her Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology at Lakehead University beginning in the fall of 2023.
Kiana Chubey
Kiana joined the lab in the summer of 2019 as a research assistant. She completed her last year of B.A. Honours degree in Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Soderstrom. In fall 2023, she will be continuing her education in the University of Alberta’s School and Clinical Child Psychology Masters program.
Trevor Sie
Trevor joined the lab in the summer of 2017 shortly after being accepted into the master’s of linguistics program here at U of M. Previously he completed undergraduate degrees in both psychology and linguistics (U of M). He is interested in cognitive linguistics and more specifically grammar measured in a multimodal context, i.e. grammar measured by gesture in addition to speech. Additionally, he worked on the ACLEW project here in the lab.
Karmen McDivitt
Karmen joined the lab in the Fall of 2014 after completing her Bachelor of Arts-Honours degree in Psychology at the University of British Colombia-Okanagan. She completed her Master of Arts degree in Clinical Psychology at the University of Manitoba, under the supervision of Dr. Melanie Soderstrom, in the Baby Language Lab. She also completed her Ph.D. in the University of Manitoba Clinical Psychology program. Her dissertation work in the lab examined the language environments of infants born to young Winnipeg mothers.
Madison Hardman
Madison received her Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto and has been conducting psychology research at the University of Manitoba since 2019. Her research focuses on mental health during the perinatal period, in addition to mental health information evaluation and information needs. In Fall 2022, she started her master’s in Clinical Psychology at the University of Manitoba.
Mercedes Casar
Mercedes joined the Baby Language Lab in 2016 and completed her B. A. Honours in Psychology. She is currently working on her Master’s in Developmental Psychology examining how smartphone use impacts the amount of language mothers use when their infants are present.
Sarah Ajao
Sarah joined the lab in Fall 2019 and has completed her BSc. degree in Psychology. Fiercely passionate about all things kids, she works and volunteers with kids and families of all backgrounds, in various capacities. Sarah is fascinated by the cognitive development of children and the way they learn to interact and appreciate the world around them while attaining speech. She plans to further her education in the field and pursue a child-centered career.
John Bunce
John joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher in the fall of 2017 shortly after completing his PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Merced. His undergraduate studies were in psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He is broadly interested in language development, especially how infants learn the meanings of words. During his time in the lab, he worked on several projects exploring children’s natural language environments, and is a major contributor to the ACLEW project. He is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University, East Bay.
Sarah MacEwan
Sarah joined the lab in Summer 2017. After completing her undergraduate degree in cognitive science at Mount Allison University in spring 2019, she returned to the lab as a summer research student. In September 2019, she was hired full-time as the lab coordinator. In Fall 2020, Sarah began her master’s of Audiology at the University of British Colombia.
Abby Wilcoxson
Abby has recently finished her Honours degree in Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Soderstrom, which explored music and language development in children.
Reagan Campbell
Reagan joined the lab in 2019 as a research assistant. She is currently working on her B.A. in Psychology. Upon completion of her bachelor’s degree, she plans on attending graduate school for speech-language pathology.
Kelsey Dyck
Kelsey completed her B.A. in Linguistics. Her involvement in the lab included the reception of the Undergraduate Research Award in the lab examining infants’ preferences for infant-directed speech (the ManyBabies project). Upon completing her bachelor’s degree, she was accepted to graduate school for speech-language pathology.
Brenna Henrikson
Brenna joined the lab in September 2015 and completed her Master’s with the Baby Language Lab in 2017 with her work on infant speech perception in preterm infants. She is now completing a PhD in Clinical Psychology here at U of M.