Prof. Dr. Sho Tsuji, Principal Investigator

Sho is the principal investigator of the IRCN babylab. She is fascinated by the question of why babies are so good at learning language. She came to University of Tokyo after studying Psychology and language acquisition in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and the USA.

Dr. Monica Barbir, Postdoc

Monica is a postdoctoral researcher at the IRCN babylab. She is interested in the cognitive mechanisms that make learning language easy for babies but hard for adults. Her goal is to innovate novel language learning methods that would ultimately allow adults to learn language as well as babies. Monica studied language acquisition at the University of Toronto and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, taught English as a foreign language with the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Programme, and designed novel tools for learning language during her MA in comic book design.

Tomoko Takashima, Lab Manager

Tomoko has a Master of Management of Technology (MOT). After working as an IT engineer, I have experience in research of providing information to parents on the childhood injury prevention research Team. I am also interested in data analysis.

Rie Ono, Lab Manager

Rie obtained a kindergarten teacher license at university.
Experience as a university employee and working in a nursery school.(On maternity leave)

Sara El-Shawa, Intern

Sara is an IRCN research intern interested in infant-robot interaction.
She completed her undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Biology at the University of Toronto.