CU Linguistics alumna Dr. Vicky T. Lai will join the faculty of the University of Arizona in Fall 2016 as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Cognitive Science. Dr. Lai received the joint PhD in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at CU in 2009, writing her thesis, "Understanding Metaphorical Expressions: Conventionality, Mappings, and Comparison Processes", under CU Linguistics Associate Professor Bhuvana Narasimhan. She then conducted postdoctoral research in the Neurobiology of Language department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and in the Language, Concepts, and the Brain laboratory at the McCausland Center for Brain Imaging, Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Lai's research uses behavioral measures (pointing, reaction times) and neuroscience methods, including EEG and fMRI, to study figurative language, the interaction of language and thought, and the relationship between language and emotion.