[Speaker Series] Life After ARiEAL – Career Planning

“What are you planning to do after graduating?” This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions that students encountered – whether asked by others or by themselves! Career planning is a rite of passage for all. It has its inherent challenges, and the current global pandemic undoubtedly threw many of us another curveball.

How many of us dwelled on the job title, or fail to see the value of our skills in different fields? Take the AI industry for example. While the industry often draws in software engineers and computer scientists who contribute in obvious ways, more and more companies are striving to employ professionals who can provide niche contributions, as innovation often occurs when treading beyond the norm. Individuals versed in linguistics and psychology may find themselves employed in AI fields, because of their ability to advance natural language processing and UI/UX design efforts, respectively.

This ARiEAL Speaker Series event will feature 3 separate panels of speakers from various backgrounds and on different career paths. The discussion will be moderated by the ARiEAL Operations Team members, Deewa Anwarzi, Mohammad Chaposhloo, and Leila Mousapour. It is intended to showcase a wide range of career options and to provide useful insights about the good, the bad and the ugly that lay beyond the convocation stage. Each 2-hour panel discussion will feature 3 panelist who will be sharing their journey during the first hour. The audience will be able to submit their questions in advance at the registration and also engage with the panelists during the second-hour Q&A sessions. Each panel discussion requires a separate registration – if you are interested in all, be sure to sign up for all of them! Please note that the sessions will not be recorded.

Expandable List

The first panel discussion will take place on Friday, December 11, 4 – 6pm. Panelists include:

  • Amanda Ho, MSc, MHSc, S-LP(C), Reg. CASLPO
    Ms. Ho initially completed her Master of Science degree in Cognitive Science of Language at McMaster University. As part of Dr. Connolly’s Language, Brain and Memory lab, she studied event-related potentials (ERPs) in Mandarin tonal language processing. This research was later published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Neuropsychologia. Ms. Ho subsequently completed her Master of Health Science degree in speech-language pathology at the University of Toronto, and has since worked with children and adults in private and public settings in the areas of speech, language, literacy, fluency, cognitive communication, and feeding/swallowing. She currently practices as a speech-language pathologist with the Toronto District School Board.
  • Caelan Marrville, MA, PhD
    After completing his doctorate, Dr. Marrville joined the Government of British Columbia as a Canadian Science Policy Fellow with the Ministry of Jobs, Trade & Technology’s Integrated Data Division, where he worked as a data scientist. In 2018, Dr. Marrville took a role with Amazon Alexa, where he held positions as both a Language Data Researcher and a Language Engineer – helping to improve Alexa’s automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding. In 2020, he started a position working for Advanced Symbolics Inc.—and AI-augmented market research start up out of Ottawa, where he works as a Manager of Augmented Research.
  • Olivier Mercier, BSc, MSc
    Mr. Mercier received his BSc in Psychology from the University of Ottawa, and his MSc at McMaster University. During his time at ARiEAL, he worked on perceptual cue weighting with Dr. Daniel Pape. Mr. Mercier is currently employed at Wysdom AI as an Optimization Specialist, where the company provides natural language processing services to clients in Canada and abroad (e.g., virtual assistants, smart talk, cognitive search, conversational interactive voice response).
  • Cassandra Chapman, PhD
    Dr. Chapman graduated from McMaster University with a PhD in Cognitive Science of Language in 2018. She began a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Keir Moulton (University of Toronto) and Dr. Ivona Kucerova (McMaster) in January 2019. It was through her postdoctoral fellowship that Dr. Chapman was affiliated with ARiEAL. Her research focuses on understanding how humans understand and interpret structure (syntax) in real-time and whether this interpretation is guided by principles proposed in the theoretical linguistics literature. Dr. Chapman also teaches at the undergraduate level and has taught at McMaster, University of Toronto, and Brock University. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto and a sessional faculty at Brock University.
  • Hope Morrison, BA
    Ms. Morrison received her BA in 2017 from Colgate University where she studied Psychology, Linguistics, and French and received high honors. After graduating, she worked as a personal and research assistant to a retired physician who was both studying and personally living with Parkinson’s Disease. After that, Ms. Morrison became a research coordinator at University of Delaware in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department. Today, she continues with the research coordinator roles at McMaster, working on a coma prognosis study in ARiEAL and a COVID-19 recovery study in the School of Rehabilitation Science.
  • Daniel Schmidtke, BA, MSc, PhD
    Dr. Schmidtke completed his BA in English Language and Linguistics, and his MSc in Developmental Linguistics in the United Kingdom. In 2016, he graduated from McMaster University with a PhD in Cognitive Science of Language. Dr. Schmidtke is now a postdoctoral fellow at ARiEAL and the McMaster English Language Development (MELD) Office at McMaster University. His current research investigates the predictors of reading development among pre-university ESL students. Dr. Schmidtke collects and analyzes longitudinal data, including eye movements during reading, cognitive-linguistic assessments, large-scale experimental psycholinguistic studies and measures of academic attainment.
  • Angela Harrison, BSc, MSc, Diploma in Communicative Disorders Assistant, Certificate of Completion in Teaching & Learning Scholar
    Ms. Harrison has worked in education for her entire career, applying her background in cognitive science and linguistics to support students with speech, language, and learning exceptionalities as a communicative disorders assistant and assistive technologist. As a post-secondary educator, she has taught a variety of face-to-face, blended, and fully online courses in linguistics, educational assistance, and continuing education. Ms. Harrison has a keen interest in the space where technology and instructional design intersect, as she has witnessed first-hand the benefits of technology implementation to support participation, independence, and achievement. Ms. Harrison currently works as an Educational Developer, Online Learning Specialist at McMaster University, where she supports faculty in the Humanities who are transitioning their face-to-face courses as blended or fully online offerings through needs analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation, and revision.
  • Constance Imbault, PhD
    Dr. Imbault graduated from the Cognitive Science of Language program in 2019. Her research focused on how different groups of people processed the emotion of words differently (for example, if you are a non-native speaker of English, do you feel the same way about the word “love” as you do about the word “love” in your native language?). Dr. Imbault is now in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (PNB), where she runs the McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellows Teaching and Leadership program. The program trains postdoctoral fellows to be great university instructors through evidence-based practices. As well, Dr. Imbault teaches courses in Social Psychology and Gender as a sessional faculty in PNB.
  • Angie Lopez, BSc, MSc
    Ms. Lopez is currently venturing the world of freelance and self-employment in the midst of a global pandemic after recently graduating from the Cognitive Science of Language program at McMaster University. Her current career scope spans across education, psychometrics, and psychological and clinical research. She is hoping to eventually expand her freelance practice or work for a hospital to broader her horizon.