Dr. Jiayi Lu

Assistant Professor

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Biography

Jiayi Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University. He leads the Syntax Experimental Linguistics (SEAL) Lab and his research focuses on the intersection of psycholinguistics and syntax. His current work explores how linguistic input influences speaker's syntactic knowledge and behavior, particularly through mechanisms such as syntactic satiation. His dissertation examined the syntactic satiation effect where repeated exposure to degraded sentences impacts acceptability ratings. Jiayi's scholarly contributions include various publications and presentations touching on themes like syntactic adaptation, sentence processing, and the analysis of syntactic structures in different languages. His ongoing projects examine the variability of syntactic knowledge acquisition across languages and the implications of syntactic structure in real-time language processing. Jiayi holds a PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University and a BA in Linguistics and Neuroscience from Northwestern University. Outside of academia, he is passionate about cooking, traveling, and soccer, and is also a licensed youth soccer coach.

Research Interests

Experience

Assistant Professor

2024-09-01 — Present

Northwestern University • Evanston, IL

Teaching and conducting research in Linguistics.

Postdoctoral Fellow

2024-09-01 — 2025-06-01

University of Pennsylvania • Philadelphia, PA

Conducting research in collaboration with faculty.

Awards

#

Best Paper Award

2024-01-01

Requirements for Northwestern University

Doctorate Program
Requirements
GPA Requirement
Required:3
TOEFL
Total
Required:90
IELTS
Overall
Required:7
Prerequisites
U.S. Bachelor's degree or equivalent
Application Checklist
  • Online application
  • Transcripts
  • Letters of recommendation
  • Statement of purpose
  • Resume/CV
  • TOEFL/IELTS scores (if applicable)
Specialization Notes

Standard PhD requirements for TGS departments including Chemistry, Physics, and Sociology.