Collaborators

Naledi Kgolo
PhD (Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics)
Lecturer: Department of English, University of Botswana

Naledi’s research interests include experimental linguistics, language processing, comprehension and acquisition. More specifically, her work focuses on mental processes that occur during language processing. She does research on English and Setswana, the official and national languages of Botswana.

Naledi sits on the Editorial Board of Marang Journal of Language and Literature, is a Board Member of the African Psycholinguistics Association (APsA), a Language Champion for the Oxford University Press – Setswana Living Dictionary, and is an Alternative Member of the University of Botswana’s Social and Behavioural Institutional Review Board (research ethics committee). Naledi has published several peer-reviewed journal articles.

Martin Mössmer
PhD Candidate: Linguistics, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

Martin conducted his Masters research on Xri, a critically endangered Khoekhoe language spoken in the Northern Cape. His research interests include the mutual influences between dominant languages and the Khoekhoe varieties and ‘Khoisan’ languages spoken in South Africa, language maintenance in these communities, varieties of ‘non-standard’ Afrikaans, folklore and stories among Khoekhoe speakers and rememberers, and the phonology, syntax and morphology of contact languages. As a part of the SA-CDI team 2018–2023, Martin worked on the adaptation of the CDIs for South Africa’s eleven official languages, and to the ongoing research.

Sefela Yalala
PhD Candidiate: Communication Sciences & Disorders, Northwestern University

Sefela’s Masters studies focused on researching early language acquisition, especially within the contexts of Setswana-speaking children, her home language. Her interests are in infant and toddler language, the role of the social environment in language development, and early intervention. She has worked on adapting a language assessment tool (the CDI) into Setswana, and also consults on Sesotho and isiXhosa research. Sefela is continuing her research with a PhD looking at caregiver and child interactions and language intervention methods.

Aaron Kaat
PhD (Psychology) Associate Professor: Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University

Dr. Kaat received his Ph.D. in Psychology – Intellectual and Developmental Disorders and a secondary graduate concentration in quantitative psychology from the Ohio State University. After that, he joined the research faculty at FSM to develop and validate self- and parent-report measures and direct assessments.

Dr. Kaat is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. He is a measurement expert, with scientific interests in genetic conditions associated with neurodevelopment (GCAND), other rare diagnoses, and intellectual or developmental disability more broadly. Dr. Kaat has a strong background in psychometrics and study design. His research program relates to measure development, adaptation, and validation in special populations using psychometrics and latent variable models. He is particularly interested in multiple-group item response theory (IRT), where the special populations may have a different distributional form than in the reference—i.e., general—population. At Northwestern, Dr. Kaat has emphasized psychometrics related to the instruments within the HealthMeasures suite (i.e. the NIH Toolbox, PROMIS, PROMIS Pediatric, Neuro-QoL, and ASCQ-Me).

William (Bill) Tucker
PhD (Computer Science) Professor: Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University

Prof. Bill Tucker is with the department of Computer Science at Stellenbosch University. He is an NRF B-rated scientist with expertise in community-based co-design digital tools with and for low resource, marginalised communities. Bill is known for work with rural community networks in the remote rural Eastern Cape (Zenzeleni Networks) and assistive technology for Deaf communities in the Western Cape (SignSupport). His current work explores digital renarration of mainstream educational content in local languages at San and Deaf schools in Namibia and Wynberg, respectively; and data collection and content dissemination in official South African languages with and for caregivers and NGOs in the Early Childhood Development space, and patients in the pharmacy space (MzansiMedRx). These efforts require the responsible use of AI and LLMs to provide and sustain social impact. Bill chairs the Social Impact portfolio for Stellenbosch Faculty of Science; is a MICT SETA 4IR Research Chair, and is also known for encouraging and nurturing interdisciplinary collaboration.

Marcel Dunaiski
PhD (Computer Science) Lecturer: Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University

Marcel’s research area covers data science problems with a focus on natural language processing (NLP) research for informetric applications as well as low-resource languages. He also works in the field of bioinformatics where he researches machine-learning-inspired approaches for viral genomic sequence analyses. He is also a research fellow at the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, as well as the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST).

Herman Kamper
PhD (Informatics) Professor: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Stellenbosch University

Herman is a professor in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Before this, he did a postdoc at TTI-Chicago with Karen Livescu. He obtained his PhD in 2017 from the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Sharon Goldwater. His group at Stellenbosch works on machine learning methods that would allow machines to acquire language autonomously, using as little supervision as possible. Through this, they hope to gain new insights into machine and human learning.

HandLab, Stellenbosch University

The Handlab is a South African Sign Language (SASL) curriculum development project based at Stellenbosch University. It is driven by a team of Deaf and hearing individuals who are passionate about empowering Deaf learners in South Africa through literacy and language development.

They create Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM) for the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and they work in partnership with six public schools for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the Western Cape Province. Their material consists of video texts of various genres, teaching resources for sign language classes, and theme-based and subject terminology.