Our Team
COALab brings together researchers from diverse backgrounds across speech-language pathology, developmental neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. We value interdisciplinary collaboration and clinically grounded research to better understand language development and to improve assessment and intervention for children with speech, language, and reading difficulties.
Principal Investigator
About Dr. Güven
Dr. Selçuk Güven is a speech-language pathologist and researcher whose work focuses on understanding the cognitive, neural, and computational mechanisms underlying speech, language, and reading disorders in children. He leads COALab with the goal of improving how speech-language disorders and dyslexia are identified, characterized, and treated—particularly in diverse and bilingual populations.
His research integrates clinical speech-language pathology, developmental neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. By combining behavioral assessment, child-friendly neuroimaging, and computational modeling, his work aims to move beyond broad diagnostic categories and toward more precise, individualized approaches to assessment and intervention.
Dr. Güven’s current projects include voice-based AI tools for early identification of speech-language disorders, Bayesian and computational models of dyslexia across languages, and reinforcement-learning approaches to personalized speech-language therapy, developed in close collaboration with clinicians and AI experts.
Academic Leadership & Service
Dr. Güven is the holder of the FRQS Junior Research Scholar – Artificial Intelligence in Health (Chercheur boursier en IA – Junior 1), a competitive award supporting innovative research at the intersection of AI and health sciences.
He currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR) and the Journal of Research in Reading (JRIR). He has also served as Guest Editor for journals including PLOS ONE, Brain Sciences, and Behavioral Sciences, and is a member of the editorial boards of Perspectives of the ASHA and Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
Dr. Güven has led international special issues, including Understanding Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorders and AI in the Assessment and Treatment of Speech-Language Disorders , both published in Behavioral Sciences.
In addition, he regularly contributes to research evaluation and funding decisions as a grant panel member for Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), SickKids–CIHR, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Interagency Interdisciplinary Peer Review Committee.
Research Interests
- Developmental speech, language, and reading disorders
- Clinical and computational speech-language pathology
- Voice-based AI and decision-support tools in neurodevelopmental disorders
- Neural bases of speech-language development and plasticity
- Bilingualism and cross-linguistic variability in speech-language disorders
Teaching
- ORT6512 – Intervention orthophonique au préscolaire 2
Postdoctoral Researchers
Redha Touati
Postdoctoral Researcher
Redha Touati is a Researcher at COALAB, applying multimodal AI, statistical modeling, and deep learning to study speech, language, and reading disorders in children. He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Polytechnique Montréal. He also worked as an R&D intern at CRIM, a teaching assistant, and a research programmer in private healthcare companies.
PhD Students
Han Yao
PhD Student
Han Yao is a PhD student at COALab working on cognitive models of reading and dyslexia in bilingual children. He is also interested in number reading, arithmetic abilities, and dyscalculia, and how these relate to reading and dyslexia. He has a background in theoretical linguistics (semantics, pragmatics, and psycholinguistics) and cognitive science.
Xinya Zhang
PhD Student
Xinya Zhang holds a BA in English and an MA in Linguistics from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. She is interested in using computational modeling to better understand child language acquisition and bilingualism. In COALab, she focuses on Bayesian modeling of cross-orthographic reading and dyslexia in bilingual children.
Qiwei Pan
PhD Student
Qiwei Pan is a PhD student at Université de Montréal researching deep learning to improve understanding and early diagnosis of speech-language disorders in children. With a background spanning engineering, human-computer interaction, and linguistics, he is passionate about building applied AI solutions and turning ideas into real projects. Outside the lab, he enjoys literature and philosophy and shares reflections through public writing.
Farhan Jahan
PhD Student
Farhan Jahan is a PhD student in Dr. Güven’s lab at CHU Sainte-Justine, exploring how bilingual children’s brains handle language and memory. What started as a master’s project became a quest to decode the hidden patterns of the mind. When not in the lab, Farhan enjoys reading—and trying not to overthink everything.
Master’s Students
Undergraduate Research Assistants / Interns
Qingyi Xu
Health Sciences CEGEP Student · Research Intern
Qingyi Xu is a Health Sciences CEGEP student at Collège Brébeuf and a member of COALab. He is a recipient of the Bourse d’Initiation à la recherche (BIRC) and works on the development of early detection methods for speech-language pathologies using voice-based machine learning. He plans to pursue medicine in the future.
Lab Alumni
Master’s Alumni
- Faten Bouhajeb (Master’s, 2025)
Research Interns
- Saif Atri (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2025)
- Qingyi Xu (Collège Brébeuf, 2025)
- Tangui Morin (University of Rennes, 2024)
- Farhan Jahan (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2024)
- Lydia Khellaf (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2024)
- Qianyang Jin (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2024)
- Alyssa Ostiguy (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2024)
- Sarah Allouane (Université de Montréal, Neuroscience, 2023)
- Albert Orozco Camacho (MILA – McGill University, 2022)
- Safiye Gencer (Université de Montréal, Psychology, 2022)
Join Our Team
We are always looking for talented and motivated individuals to join our research team. We have opportunities for:
- PhD students interested in speech-language, reading–writing and cognition research from computational, cognitive or neuroscientific perspectives
- Master’s students seeking research experience and thesis projects
- Undergraduate students looking for research assistant or internship positions
Supervision Across Programs
COALab offers research supervision across multiple academic and professional programs at the Université de Montréal and affiliated research centers. Depending on their background and objectives, students may be supervised through programs including:
- Speech-Language Pathology (Orthophonie)
- Neuroscience
- Biomedical Sciences and related health sciences programs
This interdisciplinary structure allows trainees to engage in clinically grounded research while receiving training in cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, and to tailor their academic pathway to their research interests.
For more information about joining our lab, please visit our Contact & Join page