COALAB News

Stay informed about major developments at COALAB, including research funding, invited talks, publications, trainee achievements, and lab milestones.

2026

January, 2026 — New PhD Students Join COALAB

COALAB is pleased to welcome four doctoral students who have officially joined the lab:

• Farhan Jahan — PhD in Neuroscience
• Han Yao — PhD in Speech-Language Pathology
• Xinya Zhang — PhD in Speech-Language Pathology
• Pan Qiwei — PhD in Speech-Language Pathology

Their projects span neurodevelopment, computational modeling, and clinical applications in speech-language pathology.

2025

October 2025 — Research Scientist Joins the Lab

Dr. Redha Touati joined COALAB as a Research Scientist, contributing expertise in artificial intelligence and computational modeling to support the lab’s expanding research programs.

October 2025 — Master’s Thesis Successfully Defended

Faten Bouhajeb successfully defended her research master’s thesis in Speech-Language Pathology. Congratulations to Faten on this important milestone.

July 2025 — International Conference Contributions

Oral Presentation

• Güven, S., & Friedmann, N.
  Developmental attentional dyslexia.
  Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR) Annual Meeting — Calgary, Canada.

Poster Presentations

• Güven, S., Erbaş, Y., & Çağlar, D.
  Morphological production in DLD and PD.
  Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) — San Francisco, USA.

• Güven, S., & Khellaf, M.
  Acoustic feature analysis in neurodevelopmental disorders via machine learning.
  Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) — San Francisco, USA.

May 2025 — Invited Panel and Scientific Presentations

• L’IA en orthophonie : un tabou ?
  Panel with Kathy Malas and Rania Kassir, École d’orthophonie et d’audiologie, Université de Montréal.
  Audience: Over 200 clinicians.

Oral Presentation

• Bouhajeb, F., & Güven, S.
  L’IA au service du dépistage des troubles du langage chez les enfants arabophones.
  Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS) — Montréal, Canada.

Poster Presentation

• Bouhajeb, F., & Güven, S.
  L’IA pour le dépistage des troubles du langage.
  39e Congrès du CHU Sainte-Justine — Montréal, Canada.

May 2025 — International Leadership

Dr. Güven was invited to deliver two presentations at the 12th International Congress in Speech-Language Pathology in İzmir, Türkiye, and served on the congress scientific committee.

March 2025 — Invited Conference Presentation

• Güven, S., & Gündüz, M.
  Parental reports as windows into multimodal language interaction.
  Workshop on Infant and Child Language Acquisition (WIMLA) — UNAM, Mexico City.

April 2025 — SSHRC Insight Grant Awarded

Dr. Güven was awarded a $100,000 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant for:

“Computational Approaches to Reading Development and Dyslexia in Bilinguals” (2025–2028).

The project advances computational and cross-linguistic models of reading development in bilingual populations.

February 2025 — Brain Canada Grant

Dr. Selçuk Güven received a $100,000 Brain Canada – Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research Grant for:

“The Potential of Reinforcement Learning in Pediatric Speech-Language Therapy” (2025–2027).

This project explores how reinforcement learning can support individualized speech-language interventions.

2025 — Additional Invited Talks

• Cognitive and Computational Approaches to Developmental Dyslexia: A Bayesian Perspective.
  12th National Speech-Language Pathology Convention — İzmir, Türkiye.

• The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Speech-Language Disorders.
  12th National Speech-Language Pathology Convention — İzmir, Türkiye.

• The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Diagnosis of Speech and Language Disorders: New Approaches for Clinical Assessment and Intervention.
  Tınaztepe University — İzmir, Türkiye.

Stay Connected

For inquiries about research, training opportunities, or collaborations, please contact:

Dr. Selçuk Güven
orhan.selcuk.guven@umontreal.ca

Last updated: January 2026