I was born and raised in Udonthani, Thailand, and first discovered my passion for languages while teaching Thai and Isaan (a Northeastern Lao dialect) to U.S. Peace Corps volunteers during my undergraduate years at Khon Kaen University, where I earned a B.A. in English. After teaching English in Udonthani and working with the Mennonite Central Committee in Cambodia, I pursued graduate study in linguistics at Cornell University, where I received both my M.A. (1994) and Ph.D. (1997). My doctoral dissertation—an acoustic and perceptual investigation of breathy versus modal phonation in Khmer (Cambodian)—was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant.
I am now a Full Professor of Linguistics at the University of Florida. My research examines how people perceive and learn speech sounds across languages, with a particular focus on how adult learners form and refine non-native phonetic categories. Much of my work centers on lexical tone, including why some tonal contrasts are easier to perceive than others and whether laboratory training can enhance second-language acquisition. I have also explored how listeners integrate audio-visual cues during speech perception and how bilingual experience reshapes both first- and second-language sound systems. More recently, my team has applied machine learning methods to quantify acoustic gradience in both typical and clinical speech. My most recent NSF proposal extends this line of work by combining computational modeling with bilingual data to better understand how second-language speech categories develop and how first-language categories change.
My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I served as Co-Principal Investigator on the NSF-funded Smart Electropalatography for Linguistic and Medical Applications (SELMA) project (2020–2025), which developed a novel wireless electropalatography system to advance both speech science and clinical applications. Results and publications from this project can be found at https://selma.ece.ufl.edu.
In addition, I was recently featured on the University of Florida IT Office’s Technology Conversations podcast, where I discussed my teaching and research work on speech, bilingualism, and computational tools. The episode is available on the UF IT site (https://it.ufl.edu/training/ or through the UF IT podcast page (https://it.ufl.edu/training/services/podcast-technology-conversations/)
Outside of research, I enjoy gardening, traveling, cooking, fishing, and making handicrafts such as knitting, crocheting, quilting, and sewing.
Fun fact: I am a decent cook of Thai and Isaan (Lao) food. I knit, crochet, tat, quilt, sew, etc. I love durian.
Email: ratree@ufl.edu