Last updated: August 29, 2026
Are you recruiting PhD students at UT? How do I apply?
I am recruiting students in UT Linguistics to start in Fall 2027. More information can be found here. Note that the deadline for linguistics is earlier than that of CS. I will not be advising students in CS, but can collaborate with CS PhD students whose interests or projects align with my interests.
Do I need a degree in linguistics to apply?
Not necessarily, but you should feel a) comfortable and (at the very least) b) willing to take graduate-level courses in linguistics. Information about required courses can be found here.
Should I email you (or other faculty members) to ask about admissions, visits, potential internship opportunities, etc.?
I am currently only looking to recruit PhD students for Fall 2027. You do not need to email me to tell me if you've applied.With respect to emails in general, I highly recommend taking a look at Yonatan Bisk’s advice. He’s written a much more comprehensive and fun answer to this than I ever could. I will, however, add one thing: please use your own words (i.e., please don’t copy-paste chatbot text). I (among many others) greatly value authentic curiosity and interest. Feeding my website/papers into a chatbot creates text that is a) devoid of this authenticity and b) more similar to other chatbot-generated mail I receive in my inbox. Both of these lead to me being incredibly unlikely to reply to you, so it’s in your best interest to reach out as yourself!
How do I pronounce your last name and where is it from?
Swap the “tj” for “ch” (or for the IPA-inclined: /ˈtʃuatʃa/).My last name is the Indonesian word for “weather”, which is now spelled cuaca (the change from tj > c happened in the Indonesian-Malaysian orthography change of 1972). My grandfather adopted this word as our last name after immigrating to Indonesia from China, as Chinese last names were illegal at the time and the first syllable sounds like the Hokkien pronunciation of our Chinese last name.