January 27, 2015
This January, PEN & VL2 students attended the annual “Winter Storm” student-led language science workshop hosted by the University of Maryland’s Language Science Center. This year, the two-week workshop included training on scientific modeling, communication with other scientists and the public, professional development discussions, and daily lunch talks by UMD faculty. PEN students Diana Andriola, Geo Kartheiser, Adam Stone, and Paul Twitchell, and VL2 student Andrea Sonnier participated in all parts of this workshop, and Adam Stone co-led a special interest group (SIG) with UMD postdoc William Matchin (Ph.D., neurolinguistics) focusing on the theory and methodologies behind integration of eye-tracking and neuroimaging (which is a significant BL2 scientific advancement currently underway). This SIG culminated in a visit by UMD students to BL2 where they discussed in great detail the possibilities of sign language as a lens for investigating the general syntactic structure and the relationship between gesture and meaning. In addition, PEN & VL2 students provided significant training for the production and editing of scientific videos as part of Winter Storm’s video-making workshops; their expertise in hosting previous video-making workshops (e.g., The TL2 Workshop in August 2014) were invaluable in supporting UMD students to make their own video products discussing the study of language and cognition. We look forward to continued collaboration between BL2 & VL2, and the UMD Language Science Center; many thanks to LSC Director Dr. Colin Phillips (also on VL2’s Scientific Advisory Board) and workshop organizer Allyson Ettinger for their support in making this possible!