Hello!

I am a Honduran-American first generation academic with a deep passion for multilingualism. Growing up in a bicultural and bilingual household sparked my interest in how people use language, particularly the dynamics of code-switching. I also spent much of my childhood overseas—in Turkey and England—because of my military family background. These experiences profoundly shaped my perspective and fuel my advocacy for embracing diverse language practices, regardless of accent or language variety.

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I hold a B.A. in Psychology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, recently earned my M.A. in Psychology from Stony Brook University, and working towards my Ph.D. in Cognitive Science also at Stony Brook under the guidance of Dr. Susan Brennan and Dr. Sahil Luthra.

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My current research explores how individual language experiences modulate the listening effort involved in processing code-switches via pupillometry. While much of the existing literature frames code-switching as cognitively “costly,” this raises an important question: if code-switching is so effortful, why do bilinguals engage in it so naturally and frequently? In my upcoming project, I aim to examining how factors such as speaker accent, a powerful cue to social identity, and spontaneous paralinguistic features shape the cognitive demands of listening to code-switched speech. Beyond this work, my broader interests include bilingual education, heritage language speakers, language acquisition, how multilinguals engage with large language models, barriers to higher education (particularly for marginalized communities), and social-justice–oriented research, especially in the context of wrongful convictions and post-conviction processes (which I am able to pursue through the BIAS-NRT traineeship funded by the National Science Foundation).

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Outside of research, my hobbies include reading, board and card games (including Magic The Gathering), and video games! A favorite fun fact about me: when I was an undergraduate at Clark, I competed in esports for both Overwatch and League of Legends. Pictured above and below is Athena, my beloved English–Spanish bilingual Shih Tzu.