Khanhvy Nguyen

Vy is a student in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences graduating with a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science and minor in computer science. She has been placed on the Dean’s List for five semesters and was named a New England Scholar. Her accolades include the Academic Excellence Scholarship and Award of Excellence in Chinese.

Since the summer of 2019, she has been studying language acquisition at the UConn Child Language Lab, transcribing spontaneous speech data and performing field work through conducting interviews with parents and participating in at-home data collection visits. Her honors thesis is called “Gesture Variability during Narrative Production in 5-7-Year-Olds: A Comparison of Children with ASD or TD.” With this, she has been researching the gestures of children with autism spectrum disorders and typically developed children during story narration. Vy has ultimately used this research to expand existing coding schemes of speech data. Her work has been published and presented, and she is a co-author of two posters that will be shown at two international conferences: Society for Research in Child Development Biennial and International Society for Autism Research Annual.

In addition to her intellectual dedication, Vy is committed to diversity and leadership. As treasurer of UConn’s Women in Computer Science Club, Vy strives to provide scholarships, events, trainings, and programs related to women’s empowerment and computer science. As executive board event coordinator for KCONN/Seoular dance crew, a K-pop dance group, she facilitates biweekly workshops, practices, videos, fundraisers, performances, and a charity showcase each spring. Katharine Capshaw (Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) has said, Vy “identifies and addresses social concerns to maintaining a welcoming and warm environment, encouraging growth and inclusion while learning this beautiful form of dance.” In the future, Vy will pursue a career in business intelligence through business technology consultation or data analytics.