People

Catherine “Catie” DeRienzo is currently an undergraduate student of the Montclair State University Linguistics program. Graduating in December 2024, she plans to pursue a career in ESL teaching before eventually continuing on for a Master’s degree. She is passionate about music as well as linguistics, and enjoys exploring the intersection between the two.

Abigail Montello is an undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics with double minors in American Sign Language and Cognitive Science. Passionate about language and communication, they are dedicated to bridging gaps and facilitating understanding across diverse linguistic communities. With an imminent graduation in two semesters, they aspire to obtain licensure in ASL interpreting and advance their education in Speech Language Pathology at the graduate level. Their ultimate goal is to become a school Speech Language Pathologist.

Tyler Machado is a senior pursuing a bachelor’s in Linguistics with double minors in history and anthropology. He is passionate about the relationship between language and society and how the two interact with and influence one another; he will be pursuing a doctoral degree in sociolinguistics in the fall. He is interested in language reclamation for BIPOC communities and wishes to become a professor in the aforementioned field. He is an avid fantasy writer in his free time.  

Alanna Mendoza is an undergraduate student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics while on the premedical program at Montclair. Ever since middle school, she has been obsessed with different writing systems and scripts, as well as the complex world of semantics. Although a rising freshman, she is considering graduate school for a master’s in computational linguistics. In her spare time, Alanna can be found upcycling old clothing, reading southern gothic literature, or creating cartoon animations.

Michelle Zea is a Junior undergraduate student majoring in Linguistics with a minor in cognitive science. She is very passionate about music and journaling. After finishing undergraduate,she would like to apply for a Court Interpreter License and she would like to keep focusing on music and keep learning more about the linguistics field.

Thomas De Meola is a graduate student pursuing a degree in Computational Linguistics.  He is currently focused on completing his capstone project, experimenting with automatic detection of political slant using neural networks.  Professionally, he works as the Sr. AI Data Annotator at Interactions, a company that specializes in “human-in-the-loop” AI solutions for a number of different industries.  In his free time, he likes to learn languages, play video games, and hang out with his two chinchillas, Mr. Magoo and Anubis, the Egyptian God of Darkness.

Ingrid Veloso is a graduate student in the Computational Linguistics program. While pursuing her masters, she is also participating in faculty-led research as a graduate research assistant within the Linguistics department, particularly in the realm of Corpus linguistics and education. Her research interests include ESL learning, writing, integration of technology in language learning, and stylometry. She is also a harpist, having participated in various ensembles in her undergraduate years, and enjoys learning obscure musical instruments as a personal hobby.

Hasan Can Biyik is a graduate student in the Computational Linguistics program. He holds a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting from Marmara University. During his undergraduate studies, he began working as an English language teacher, which sparked his passion for second language acquisition. He works as a graduate assistant for the Dean’s Office for data organization and analysis. Additionally, he is a graduate assistant to Dr. Feldman concentrating on the euphemism research mainly focusing on the Turkish language. His research interests include natural language processing and second language acquisition. He aims to do his PhD upon completing his graduate studies.