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PULSAR Undergraduate Program

 

PULSAR applications are currently closed. Stay tuned for updates on future undergraduate opportunities at the LSC

 

PULSAR is an interdisciplinary program for undergraduate students. The University of Maryland has the largest and most integrated team of language scientists in North America, and PULSAR enables undergraduates to tap into this unique resource, providing them with opportunities beyond those found in their primary major. The program accepts new students each semester. Applications are typically due in October through November for the Spring and March through May for the Fall.

 

Some Current and Recent Pulsar Students

Jack Burke
Computer Science & Linguistics

Preethi Pai
Computer Science & Linguistics

Sarah Patch
Linguistics

Avery Vess
Hearing and Speech Sciences

Vicky Dubin
Biology Ecology and Evolution

Sarah Nam
Linguistics, Criminology

Avni Gulrajani
Computer Science
 

Nicole Diaz-Mackey
Hearing and Speech Sciences

Miriam Franklin-Grinkorn
Psychology & Anthropology

Elsa Mandt
Linguistics & Russian

Rebecca Warwick
Neuroscience & Spanish

Chenglei Si
Computer Science

Nyomi Fox
Linguistics & Arts Leadership
 


Mina Nichols
Linguistics & Hearing and
Speech Sciences


Sophia Domanski
Grad Student Mentor 2023
Hearing and Speech Sciences


Rosa Lee
Grad Student Mentor 2023
Linguistics

Andrew Zukowsk,i PULSAR Director
Andrea Zukowski
PULSAR Director
 
     

The PULSAR program develops students’ abilities in integration, communication, discovery, and leadership – skills that are in high demand in today’s society.  It does so by building on a highly successful interdisciplinary graduate program that has run since 2008, and which has already created  a community of 100+ students and faculty from 10 departments. Members of PULSAR join a broad community of students, researchers, and faculty from areas such as Computer Science, Psychology, Hearing & Speech Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Human Development, Special Education, the iSchool, the School of Public Health, Linguistics, and the School of Languages, Literatures, and Culture.

 

As members of PULSAR, students have opportunities to build their résumés, develop a relationship with a scientific mentor, and become a member of a strong, collaborative group of peers.  With the PULSAR program, we aim to provide undergraduate students with a breadth of experiences and training that can prepare them for careers in research, technology, 

education, health, and public policy.

 

PULSAR is run through the Maryland Language Science Center, which brings together the many different researchers, faculty, and students at the University of Maryland who are interested in the study of language.  Our goals are to understand how human language works, how to replicate this success in machines/technology, and how to help individuals learn language more effectively and recover from language related deficits. UMD’s language science community offers unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary training in language.

 

Language Science draws from diverse fields, including technology-related fields such as computer science (including natural language processing and machine translation), education-related fields such as second-language acquisition, special education, and curriculum development, and health-related fields such as speech/language pathology, audiology, aging, and public health.  It also includes domains that study how the brain works, such as psychology, neuroscience, genetics, biology, and cognitive science, as well as traditional language fields such as linguistics and the study of various languages. This breadth of involvement provides the study of language science with unparalleled connections to a wide range of employment opportunities.