Current Team
Dr. Antti Arppe – Director
Antti is Associate Professor of Quantitative Linguistics at the University of Alberta and founder of ALTLab. He is also the Partnership director for the SSHRC funded Partnership “21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages“. His research applies and develops statistical and computational methods, as well as corpora and language technology, in modeling linguistic phenomena, with an aim for cognitive plausibility, and contrasting evidence representing different modalities of language. Prior to his academic career, he worked in senior managerial positions for Lingsoft, a Finnish language technology company, responsible for proofing tools such as those that will be developed by ALTLab. In ALTLab, Antti is responsible for the overall planning and management of the project, and supervising both research and development of the computational linguistic models and subsequent applications for Plains Cree and other indigenous languages.
Dr. Jordan Lachler
Jordan Lachler is Director of the Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI). He brings in considerable experience from many years of close collaborative work with a range of indigenous language communities including Haida and Nakota, and has been a key contributor in the development of partnerships with Cree and other communities. Dr. Lachler participates in overall project planning and management and supervises research on the computational description of Plains Cree and the development of the subsequent applications so that community involvement and feedback is ensured.
Cameron Duval
Cameron is a PhD student in the Linguistics Department at the University of Alberta. His research work mainly involves the use of statistical methods to model linguistic structure, particularly in morphology, and how these quantitative findings relate to cognition, typology, and formal theory. At the ALT Lab, Cameron is working on optical character recognition of Lushootseed texts and WordNet integration into the Plains Cree Online Dictionary.
Daniel Dacanay – Cree Annotator and Research Assistant
Daniel Dacanay is a third-year undergraduate student in the Linguistics Department at the University of Alberta, with a minor in the Department of Anthropology. His research principally concerns the use of computational and manual methods of semantic analysis on large corpora such as dictionaries, predominantly in Plains Cree. At the ALT Lab, he works chiefly on digitising and semantically classifying existing Plains Cree dictionaries, annotating spoken audio, and document translation. Outside of the ALT Lab, he takes interest in structural typology and comparative semantics, as well as being an avid vexillologist and trombonist.
Dr. Felipe Bañados Schwerter
Dr. Felipe Bañados Schwerter is a software developer at ALTLab. Felipe holds both a B.Eng.Sc and a M.Sc. degree from the University of Chile, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia. Felipe’s research focused on the design and foundations of gradually typed programming languages, and he currently maintains and develops ALTlab’s intelligent dictionaries and other 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages. When he is not at the office or at the computer, Felipe enjoys gardening, listening to records, and exploring the River Valley.
Héloïse Torck
– Project Administrator
Héloïse is the Project Administrator for ALTLab and 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages. After graduating with a BA in Spanish and Translation from the Catholic University of Lille, France, she came to the University of Alberta where she completed an MA in Applied Linguistics and a BA in Native Studies. Through her studies and volunteer work, she developed her administrative skills and awareness about Indigenous issues.
She can be contacted through the general Partnership email, 21.tools@ualberta.ca.
Olga Kriukova – PhD Student
Olga is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, Northern Dene languages, Dene languages’ morphosyntax, computational methods for linguistics analysis, and corpus linguistics. She works primarily with Upper Tanana, a language spoken across the U.S./Canada border in the Yukon Territory and in eastern interior Alaska. At ALTLab, she is currently involved in the development of the Upper Tanana verb forms generator. She is also a part-time Korean teacher. In her free time, Olga enjoys embroidery and weaving.
Rae Anne Claxton
Rae Anne is W̱SÁNEĆ from SȾÁUTW̱, born in Quw’utsun and raised between both of her communities on Vancouver Island. She is passionate about learning the languages of her people, SENĆOŦEN and Hul’q’umi’num’, and supporting language reclamation through resource development. Rae Anne is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. She received her Master’s degree from Simon Fraser University. Her thesis, titled lhwet tse’ xwi’em’? hwi ’een’thu tse’: How I learned to perform a Hul’q’umi’num’ story, outlines the steps she took to learn and tell one long story. Rae Anne is dedicated to reclaiming language use in her family and contributing to the accessibility, understanding, and use of technology to support and strengthen language use in community. Outside of her studies, Rae Anne participates in First Peoples’ Cultural Council’s Mentor-Apprentice Program where she is gaining fluency in Hul’q’umi’num’ (a dialect of Halkomelem) from her si’lu, Sarah Modeste. Her interests are vast, however, her favourite pastimes are spending time with her family, baking, and listening to Hul’q’umi’num’ stories – “The truth about stories is, that’s all we are.” – Thomas King
Former Members
Ahmad Jawad
Ahmad Jawad is President of Intellimedia Inc., an Edmonton-based software development firm. Through Intellimedia, Jawad has been an active partner in helping to meet the educational needs of First Nations groups in Alberta, and brings his contacts to the project. Intellimedia created and maintains the on-line Cree Dictionary website (that incorporates the Alberta Elders’ Cree Dictionary), which has proven a valuable source and tool for the preservation of the Cree Language.
Aida Radu 
Aida worked with ALT LAb as a fourth-year undergraduate student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, with a minor in Computing Science. During her time with us, she helped helped with ongoing software development. She has research experience in both departments and had at this point completed one original publication. In her spare time, Aida enjoys working with various art media and playing with her cats! In the future, she plans to continue her exploration of linguistics into graduate school. Her main interests involve the syntax and production complexities of Heritage Language Speakers.
Andrew Neitsch – Software Developer
Atticus Harrigan – Lab Manager (Recording infrastructure)
Atticus is a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics and Lab Manager (recording infrastructure). His interests include Native American languages, corpus linguistics, and computational methods for linguistic analysis. Theoretically he has an interest in cognitive grammar and its interface with morphosyntax and semantics. In working with the ALT lab, Atticus aids in recording, management of annotations, and principally develops the Plains Cree finite state machine that provides the backbone for the machine analysis and generation of Plains Cree.
Dr. Conor Snoek
Dr. Snoek is a former team member and current collaborator with ALT Lab. Conor joined the ALT Lab while still a doctoral candidate at the University of Alberta, Department of Linguistics. He is an Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge. He has been involved with linguistic training and revitalization programs with Indigenous communities in Alberta since 2009, and further contributes his expertise with both Dene and Algonquian (esp. Plains Cree and Blackfoot) languages to our 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages Partnership.
Dr. Danny Hieber – Postdoctoral Fellow
Danny is a postdoctoral fellow with the SSHRC-funded Partnership 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages. His work focuses on the documentation, description, and revitalization of native languages of North America, with an eye towards linguistic typology and functional theory. He works primarily with Chitimacha (Sitimaxa), an isolate once spoken in Louisiana and now being revived by the Chitimacha Tribe on the basis of archival materials, and Plains Cree, an Algonquian language widely spoken in Canada. He also runs the Digital Linguistics (DLx) project, dedicated to creating web-based tools for linguistic data management.
Dr. David Beck
Dr. Beck is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. He has worked and published extensively on Lushootseed, a Salishan language, and on Upper Necaxa Totonac, an endangered language of East Central Mexico. He is an editor of the book series Brill’s Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas and a co-editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics. His fieldwork on Upper Necaxa has produced two practical vocabularies for the indigenous community and he is currently an advisor to the Tulalip (Lushootseed) Tribal language programme. Dr. Beck contributed to ALT Lab with his extensive experience on developing partnerships with indigenous communities, as well as his knowledge of Totonac.
Dominik Kadlec
Dr. Dustin Bowers
Dr. Bowers worked with ALT Lab while a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. He worked on spell checkers and similar tools for Cree and Ojibwe on the former SSHRC Development grant 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages.
Eddie Antonio Santos – NRC Application Software Developer 
Eddie is a software developer with the National Research Council of Canada that is embedded here in the ALT Lab. Eddie holds both a BSc and MSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta. Eddie’s research focused on how natural language processing tools can be leveraged to work on source code and software engineering artifacts. In his spare time, Eddie enjoys teaching beginners how to code, adventuring in the D&D multiverse, and jamming on bass guitar. Eddie received a BSc. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta. Contact him at easantos@ualberta.ca or https://eddieantonio.ca/.
Erin McGarvey 
Erin is a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. For her thesis she is doing ethnographic research on a summer language program for the Unangax Language in St. Paul Island, Alaska that uses the Where Are Your Keys? method of language learning. Her other research interests include linguistic anthropology, historical linguistics, language documentation, and lexicography. A perfect evening for Erin would involve curling up with her cat, a warm drink, and a good book/fun craft in front of a cozy roaring fire.
Dr. Isabell Hubert Lyall
Dr. Hubert Lyall worked with ALT Lab as a PhD student of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on Psycholinguistics, especially on individual differences in Language processing and word production, and on Natural Language Processing. At ALTlab, she worked on developing the first Optical Character Recognition models for Haida.
Jolene Poulin – Software Developer
Jolene recently graduated with her BSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta and joined ALTLab as a Software Developer. She is largely focused on recording extraction, validation, and speech synthesis, helping to bring a larger number of accurate recordings to the services offered by ALTLab and the 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages Partnership. Jolene values her work as it helps her connect with her Métis heritage and puts her natural language skills to good use. In her free time, Jolene enjoys knitting, roller skating, and hanging out with awesome dogs.
Dr. Josh Holden – Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Juhani Järvikivi
Dr. Järvikivi is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics at the University of Alberta. His work takes an experimental psycholinguistic approach to aspects of language and cognition across populations and across languages. His current research concentrates on language comprehension in mono- and bilingual children and adult language learners.
Karoline Antonsen
Karoline is a Masters student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta and works for the ALTLab as a research assistant. Her research interests are Dene languages, lexical relations, and language revitalization. At the ALTLab she is currently working on tone correction and semantic classifications in the Tsuut’ina database.
Katie Schmirler – Lab Coordinator (Western Cree Dictionaries) 
Katherine is a postdoctoral researcher, working under Dr. Inge Genee at the University of Lethbridge on the Blackfoot Language Resources project. She completed her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Alberta in 2023 under the 21st Century Tools project. Her background is in description and maintenance of Indigenous North American languages and in comparative Algonquian. Her dissertation focused on the computational modelling of Plains Cree syntax. She is currently applying her experience in the computational modelling of Plains Cree to modelling Blackfoot to create an intelligent online dictionary. In her time at the ALTLab, she was a Lab Co-ordinator (Western Cree dictionaries). She was heavily involved in the Spoken Dictionary of Maskwacîs Cree recording project.
Kobe Amoh 
Kobe joined ALT Lab as a web design and development student and helped with front-end development at the ALT Lab. Previously, he was the web content assistant with Facilities and Operations at the University of Alberta and interned with the web team at NAIT. Kobe is passionate about using web platforms for social good. He was the volunteer web manager for UrbanYEG—an Edmonton group that uses photography as a tool for supporting mental health initiatives in the local community. In his spare time, Kobe shoots photography work on a select basis for brands and groups, enjoys keeping up with the state of the web and its technologies, and spends a fair bit of time inwardly stressing about his favourite soccer club, Real Madrid.
Lex Giesbrecht
Lex joined ALT Lab as an undergraduate student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. As a research assistant, Lex was involved in the recording and annotation of spoken data for ALT Lab’s efforts in compiling an electronic Plains Cree dictionary. His areas of interest include linguistic morphology and the documentation, study, and revitalization of Indigenous languages of North America.
Matt Yan 
Matt joined ALT Lab as a fourth year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alberta. At ALT Lab he helped with ongoing software development by maintaining language technologies including the online Cree dictionary and the Cree click-in-text project. Matt has great interests in linguistics and other software projects. He is the creator of vocalsgone.com, a website that generates tracks for practice or performance from audio files by isolating or removing selected elements from a song. He also enjoys playing and teaching the drums in his spare time.
Megan Bontogon
Megan joined ALT Lab as a fourth-year undergraduate student of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. Her interests include revitalization, documentation and preservation of Indigenous Languages in Canada as well as computer assisted language learning (CALL) as a tool for second language acquisition and endangered language pedagogy. Acting as a research assistant, she worked to record speakers, complete annotations, and create various exercise templates and interface functions for a CALL application for Plains Cree.
Michaela Stang – Project Administrator
Michaela was the Project Administrator for ALTLab and 21st Century Tools for Indigenous Languages. She holds a MLIS and a BA in Linguistics and Anthropology, both from the University of Alberta. Over the course of her degrees, she has had a number of student, volunteer, and professional positions at the UofA, including research assistantships in Linguistics and Digital Humanities, volunteer program assistant with CILLDI, public service assistantships with the University of Alberta Libraries, and many student committee executive roles.
Ruben Mögel
Ruben is a Masters student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, which he joined after graduating with his BA in general linguistics and computational linguistics at the University of Zürich. His research at ALTLab is mostly focused on structuring data and feeding it into finite-state language technology frameworks. His further interests lie in developing tools to facilitate the creation, maintenance, and interoperability of language documentation corpora. In his role as a ‘proper’ linguist, he has mostly worked with Dëné Sųłıné. Ruben spends his free time hibernating, trying to explain linguistics to his friends (and failing), or diving into ethnolinguistic music archives.
Dr. Sally Rice
Dr. Rice is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, and was one of the scholars involved with the founding of CILLDI. She has worked extensively with Indigenous languages of the Dene languages family, in particular Dëne Sųłıné, spoken across much of central Canada. While with ALT Lab, she lent her years of experience in fostering partnerships with Indigenous communities, as well as her knowledge of Dëne Sųłıné.
Dr. Timothy Mills 
Dr. Mills is a researcher and instructor at the University of Alberta. He researches speech production, acoustics, and speech synthesis, and teaches general linguistics and phonetics. In ALTLAB, Tim developed speech synthesizers for Indigenous languages, using the latest technology to enable rapid development of computer voices from small recording sets.