Federica Cavicchio is a Researcher at the Department of Human Studies, University of Salento, affiliated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Language (CRIL). She specializes in computational linguistics, second language acquisition, and gesture studies. Her current projects focus on phonetic training applications for English learners, developed with Prof. Mirko Grimaldi. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Trento and has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Birmingham (Marie Curie Fellow), University of Haifa, and University of Padua. Her work integrates neuro-linguistics, experimental psychology, and computational methods. She advises companies on AI and NLP applications, emphasizing gender balance in technology. Notable contributions include studies on bilingual gesture transfer, prosody in L2 interactions, and emotional expression compositionality. Educations: PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (201X), University of Trento Postdoc positions at University of Birmingham, University of Haifa, University of Padua Research Interests: Her work bridges computational linguistics with experimental psychology, focusing on L2 phonetics, gesture-speech integration, and emotion expression. She explores how cognitive and neural processes underpin language learning and communication, with applications in AI and educational tools. Publications: Her recent work spans emotion detection in NLP, gesture’s role in L2 fluency, and corpus-based linguistic analysis. These studies highlight innovations in multimodal communication research and language technology. Awards: Marie Curie Fellowship (20XX) Consulting & Impact: Advises tech firms on ethical AI development, particularly addressing gender representation in NLP models. Collaborates on phonetic training software for language learners. Labs/Teams: CRIL Lab (interdisciplinary language research), Sign Language Research Lab (Haifa, Israel).





