Monica is at the beginning of the wonderful adventure that is a postdoc. Broadly, her research is focused on how humans learn language across the lifespan. In particular, it aims at pinpointing the cognitive mechanisms that develop from infancy through childhood and into adulthood and that make reaching native level proficiency in a second language difficult later in life. Her research serves as a basis for and actively incorporates innovation of novel methods for learning a second language, methods that would ultimately allow a learner of any age to attain native level proficiency in a second language.
Monica did her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto. She taught English as a foreign language with the Japanese Exchange and Teaching programme and received an MA in comic book design before diving into a PhD at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. She is now a post-doctoral researcher at the International Research Center for Neurointelligence at the University of Tokyo.
