Yuna Bae

GRANTS

Role: Principal Investigator (PI)

2026-2027 AY 2026 NFMLTA Dissertation Writing Support Grant
- ($2,500) Offered by National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations
- Research project: AI evaluation of L2-accented English speech: Effects of accent variety, speech mode, and accent familiarity training
2025-2026 AY 2026 Support for Graduate Students (SGS) Award
- ($1,700) Offered by Northern Arizona University
- Research project: Exploring the impact of accent familiarity on ChatGPT’s intelligibility of L2-accented speech
2024-2025 AY 2025 Support for Graduate Students (SGS) Award
- ($3,250) Offered by Northern Arizona University
- Research project: Testing AI’s intelligibility: Do voice-activated assistants have L1 bias?

Role: Research Assistant

06/2026-05/2027 Stakeholders’ evaluations of international professionals’ speaking performances: Extrapolation of the Duolingo English Test’s speaking to real-world contexts
- PI: Okim Kang
- Sponsor: Duolingo
- Amount: $38,225
01/2025-12/2025 Investigating the predictive validity of the DET test scores for students’ academic success at a tertiary institution in North America
- PI: Okim Kang (Co-PI; Dr. Maria Kostromitina)
- Sponsor: Duolingo
- Amount: $32,073
01/2024-03/2025 Construct and predictive validity of the DET speaking tasks for ITA contexts
- PI: Okim Kang (Co-PI; Dr. Maria Kostromitina)
- Sponsor: Duolingo
- Amount: $34,789
09/2023-05/2024 Collaborative Research: Second language speech production: Formulation of objective speech intelligibility measures and learner-specific feedback
- PI: Okim Kang (Co-PIs: Dr. Johh Hansen at UT-Dallas, Co-PI; Dr. Stephen Looney at PSU)
- Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Amount: $323,994