Previously Worked with Us

SIU, Yee Ting (Iris)

Siu Yee Ting (Iris) was a full-time research assistant at the SLR Lab. After receiving her BSSoc in Psychology (first class honours), Iris worked as a SEN teaching assistant in a primary school. She supported various kinds of SEN students and provided individualised training for them. In 2023, Iris also received her MSc in Foundations of Clinical Psychology from the University of Southampton.

Iris was involved in the SLR Lab's longitudinal research projects, which investigate the language, cognitive and reading development of children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

LING, Qianyun (Lydia)

Qianyun Ling (Lydia) was a full-time research assistant at the SLR Lab. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh (with first class honours), and received a Master of Science in Education (Child Development and Education) from the University of Oxford. Qianyun’s research interest is on Psychometrics. During her university years, she mastered advanced data analytic techniques using R (e.g., SEM, IRT), and gained experiences working with young children in assessment settings from various internships focusing on children’s development and wellbeing.

Qianyun was a member of the SLR Lab’s 5-year longitudinal research project, I-DID, which focuses on the cognitive, language, literacy, and behavioural development of children with family risk of dyslexia. She primarily worked on data analysis and conducting child assessment sessions.

YUE, Cherry

Cherry Yue was a full-time research assistant in the SLR Lab. In 2022, she graduated with first-class honours in BSc Social Science (major in psychology) from the University of Hong Kong. During her university years, she actively participated in various activities and volunteer programmes to provide teaching and counseling services for children and teenagers with SEN.

She was a winter research intern at the SLR Lab in 2020, where she began working on the lab's on-going music project. She was also engaged in the SLR Lab's 3-year longitudinal deaf reading project, which investigates the neurophysiological indicators of cognitive, language, and reading comprehension difficulties in deaf and hearing individuals.

WAI, Justine Wing June

Justine Wai was a full-time research assistant in the SLR Lab. In 2021, she graduated with first-class honours in BSc Psychology and Criminology from Loughborough University in the UK, where she also received the Dean’s Prize for Academic Excellence after obtaining the top score in the programme. During her University studies, she worked part-time at a nursery and coordinated teaching activities for school-aged children. Prior to working full-time, she was a summer research intern at the SLR Lab in 2019 and 2020. These experiences inspired her interest in a future research career, focusing on children’s learning and communication, and how external influences, such as parents, play a role in early childhood development.

LAW, Nicole

Nicole Law was the lab manager at the SLR Lab. She received her Master of Science in Developmental Linguistics from The University of Edinburgh in 2019. She also completed her BA in English Studies at City University of Hong Kong with first class honors in 2018. She endeavored to further her research and work in bilingualism as well as atypical language development.

In the lab, Nicole mainly focused on the 3-year longitudinal study on ASD children’s cognitive skills and reading comprehension development. She was also responsible for any research-related matters of the SLR Lab.

FUNG, Cecilia 

​Cecilia Fung was a research assistant at the Speech, Language and Reading Lab since 2017. Majoring in Linguistics and Geography, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Hong Kong in 2017. Cecilia endeavored to further her studies and work in fields related to cognitive processing in young children and psycholinguistics. To date, she has studied neurolinguistics at the University of Amsterdam and has worked in a playgroup center for infants and toddlers.

In the lab, Cecilia worked on two projects. One is an international collaboration on infants' perception and the other is a 3-year longitudinal study on ASD children's reading comprehension development.

LAW, Katherine

Katherine Law was a research assistant at the Speech, Language and Reading Lab. She received her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation, she worked as a Behavior Specialist at the Center for Social Dynamics, an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) service provider with centers located across the San Francisco Bay Area. She provided 1-on-1 ABA services to children diagnosed on the autism spectrum at home- and community-settings.

In the lab, Katherine worked on two large-scale projects. One was a 3-year longitudinal study on bilingual children’s reading comprehension development. The other was a 2-year study of statistical learning of orthographic regularities in children with developmental dyslexia.

CHOW, Cynthia

Cynthia Chow was a research assistant at the Speech, Language and Reading Lab from Feb - Aug 2017. In 2015, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia with a major in Psychology and a minor in Asian Area Studies. She has been working as a Behaviour Interventionist in Metro Vancouver for the last three years, providing services to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental disorders in home, school, and community based settings.

LAM, Yi Tung Michelle

Michelle Lam was an undergraduate research assistant at the Speech, Language and Reading Lab from Oct 2016-Jan 2017. She graduated from The University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor degree majoring in English studies with a minor in Education. She is interested in early childhood special education, and has studied in  an early childhood education and development program at the University of British Columbia. She was also a class support volunteer at Watchdog Early Education Centre. She assisted on statistical learning project. 

DENG, Qinli

Qinli Deng was a postdoctoral fellow of the Speech, Language and Reading Lab. Dr. Deng received her PhD degree in Psycholinguistics from The University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include neural mechanisms of sign language processing and literacy development of children who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing.

Publications

1. Deng, Q., & Tong, S. X. (2021). Language but not cognitive weakness in deaf or hard-of-hearing poor comprehenders. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education.
2. Deng, Q., & Tong, S. X. (2021). Suprasegmental but not segmental phonological awareness matters in understanding bilingual reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese and English: A 3-year longitudinal study. Annals of Dyslexia, 1-20.
3. Tong, X., Deng, Q., Deacon, S.H., Saint-Aubin, J., & Wang, S. (2020). To see or not to see: The roles of item properties and language knowledge in Chinese missing logographeme effects. Applied Psycholinguistics, 41(5), 1113-1139.
4. Deng, Q., Gu, F., & Tong, S.X. (2020). Lexical processing in sign language: A visual mismatch negativity study. Neuropsychologia, 148. 107629.
5. Deng, Q., Choi, W., & Tong, X. (2019). Bidirectional cross-linguistic association of phonological skills and reading comprehension: Evidence from Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities. 52(4), 299-311.

LI, Ran

Ran Li was a postdoctoral fellow in the Speech, Language and Reading Lab. She received a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a master’s degree in speech-language pathology from the University of Maryland. Ran completed her PhD training in the Aphasia Research Laboratory at Boston University. Her previous research has focused on behavioral and neural changes following language treatment in both monolinguals and bilinguals with post-stroke aphasia. She is also interested in neural mechanisms associated with reading intervention in individuals with developmental or acquired reading difficulty.

ZHANG, Manli

Manli Zhang was a postdoctoral fellow in Educational Neuroscience at the Speech, Language and Reading Lab. She graduated from Peking University with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Developmental and Educational Psychology. She received her PhD degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Maastricht University. She is interested in language learning and comprehension (both spoken and written), and the “black box” in the brain that governs such development.