Education
2004 Ph.D. Psychology. Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, UK. Advisor: Nick Chater.
1999 B.A. (Laurea, Summa cum laude). Linguistics and Translation Studies, SSLMIT, Universita` di Bologna, Italy.
Professional Experience
2010- Affiliated Faculty, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii
2008- Assistant Professor, Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaii
2008- Director, Center for Second Language Research, University of Hawaii
2006-2008 Research Associate, Department of Psychology, Cornell University
2003-2006 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, Cornell University
1998-1999 Teaching Assistant of Italian, Lycée St. Exupéry, Marseille, France
Editorial work
Guest Editor, (with Michael J. Spivey), Special Issue on Cognition and Communication, Information.
Review Editor, Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.
Main awards and grants
Pending Onnis, L. & Spivey, M., Perceptual simulations in second language learners. National Science Foundation.
2010 Sigma Xi William Procter Prize Grant-in-Aid of Research Recipient, $5,000.
2009-2010 Onnis, L. (PI), Phonotactic cues to categorical perception in first and second language speakers. Language Learning Small Grants Program ($10,000).
2006-2008 Onnis, L. (PI), Spivey, M.J., Christiansen, M.H., Semantic valence tendencies in monolingual and bilingual sentence comprehension. National Institutes of Health ($158,000 over two years).
2008-2013* Onnis, L. (PI), Understanding developmental language disorders: A cognitive science approach. European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants Award, Euros600,000. *Declined for incompatibility with current US position.
2002 Onnis, L., Pine, J., and Jones, G.: £3,000 grant from the British Psychological Society for organizing a three-day international workshop on the CHILDES database.
1999-2003 Graduate Research Assistant for EU Networks of Excellence project Basic mechanisms of learning and forgetting with Nick Chater.