Marlyse Baptista is the President's Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997. Her academic work focuses on various aspects of linguistics, specifically language contact, cognition, pidgins and creoles, language emergence, bilingualism, and the processes involved in second, third, and Ln language acquisition. She has contributed to the understanding of syntactic theory and psycholinguistic research through her studies and publications. Her research interests are at the intersection of cognitive science and linguistic theory, and she has been recognized for her contributions in these areas.