Lisa Lipani

I currently work as a research scientist at FormFree, where I work to improve software that analyzes a borrower's ability to repay a loan.

I received my PhD in linguistics at the University of Georgia, where I studied phonetics and phonology. My dissertation, Subphonemic Variation in English Stops: Studies using automated methods and large-scale data, used machine learning to show a relationship between vocal fold vibration in English stops (p, t, k, b, d, g; sounds in which the airflow stops in your vocal tract) and the acoustics of the surrounding segments, examined the onset of vocal fold vibration in stops in the Digital Archive of Southern Speech, and improved the Montreal Forced Aligner by adding pronunciation variation for t, d in addition to unpacking the acoustic correlates of MFA's models.

While at UGA, I was a research assistant in the Linguistic Atlas Project and a teaching assistant for Natural Language Processing and The Study of Language Online. I also taught Phonetics and Phonology, The Study of Language, and First Year Composition (in several different iterations).

I also have a degree in English Rhetoric and Composition, with a minor in Spanish, and a TESOL Certificate from Augusta University.