Lab Director
Ben Parrell
Position title: Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Email: bparrell@wisc.edu
Lab Manager
Chris Naber
Email: cwnaber@wisc.edu
I studied Psychology, Linguistics, and Music Performance at Emory University. After a stint at Epic and UW-Madison’s CSD capstone program, I started working in SMAC Lab in Summer 2019. I programmed experiments related to timing in speech, assisted students on projects, and improved lab tools like Audapter. In Summer 2021 I became lab manager.
Postdoctoral Research Associates
Dinglan Tang
Email: dtang38@wisc.edu
I am a postdoctoral fellow at Speech Motor Neuroscience Group at UW–Madison, a collaboration between the Brain, Language, and Acoustic Behavior Lab (PI: Niziolek) and the Speech Motor Action + Control Lab (PI: Parrell). My research focuses on the mechanisms underlying sensorimotor learning in speech at both behavioral and neural level.
I completed my PhD in Speech&Brain lab at University of Oxford in the global pandemic (2020) with Kate Watkins and co-mentor Charlotte Stagg. My PhD work focused on the auditory-motor interactions during both speech perception and production. I use a mixture of behavioural testing (e.g. real-time feedback perturbation), Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and Magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (M/EEG).
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Bailey Meyers
Email: bbmeyers@wisc.edu
I am a junior undergraduate majoring in Communication Sciences & Disorders and Linguistics with a certificate in Disability Rights & Services. I plan to go to graduate school for speech language pathology, and I’m very interested in neurodegenerative disorders and both speech planning and production.
Erin Murdoch
Email: emmurdoch@wisc.edu
I am a junior majoring in communication sciences & disorders and psychology. I plan to pursue a career as a speech language pathologist. I am particularly interested in the connection between neuroscience and speech.
Josh Silverman
Email: jnsilverman4@wisc.edu
I am a sophomore at UW-Madison majoring in biochemistry and plan to pursue a career in medicine. I am specifically interested in neural circuits and how they interact to produce speech and motor functions.
Emily Tesch
Email: eltesch@wisc.edu
I am an undergraduate sophomore here at UW Madison majoring in Neurobiology and Spanish. I am particularly interested in the neuroscience behind speech production from a multilingual linguistics perspective.
Collaborators:
- Carrie Niziolek, UW-Madison, Communication Sciences & Disorders
- Rich Ivry, UC Berkeley, Psychology
- John Houde, Srikantan Nagarajan, & Zarniah Agnew, UC San Francisco, Speech Neuroscience Laboratory
- Vikram Ramanarayanan, Educational Testing Services
- Adam Lammert, Tom Quatieri, & Greg Ciccarelli, MIT Lincoln Labs
- Jelena Krivokapic, University of Michigan, Linguistics
- Doug Shiller, University of Montreal, Speech Language Pathology & Audiology
- Vince Gracco & Mark Tiede, Haskins Labs
- Cynthia Lee, Samantha Gordon Danner, Louis Goldstein, Sungbok Lee, Dani Byrd, & Tanner Sorensen, University of Southern California, Linguistics/SPAN group