Hello! I'm a linguist with specializations in phonetics and phonology. I currently work as a Postdoctoral Fellow studying sign language phonetics with Zed Sehyr in the Cognition, Language, and Plasticity Lab at Chapman University.
I received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California in 2022. My dissertation research explored how beatboxers push the limits of the vocal instrument to create new sounds and sound patterns. At USC I was a member of the USC Phonetics and Phonology group and the Speech Production and Articulation kNowledge (SPAN) group.
I pronounce my name as [ɹiːd blɛ͡ilak] and use he/him pronouns.
I won First Place in the Five Minute Linguist (5ML) competition at the LSA 2026 Annual Meeting. Five Minute Linguist is high-profile competition in which linguists give research presentations aimed toward an audience of the general public.
Beatrhyming is the art of simultaneous performance of speech and beatboxing by a single person. This open access publication is the first in-depth scientific analysis of how an expert beatrhymer weaves beatboxing sounds into words.
Highly skilled beatboxers manipulate vocal airflow in a myriad of ways. So if you want to be a better beatboxer, you need to know how to move your air! This article was jointly written by a beatboxer and beatbox scientist to teach beatboxers about the role of airstream mechanisms in beatboxing.
Beatboxing sounds like the Kick Drum use lip closing actions that are qualitatively similar to lip closures in speech, like for [b] and [p]. We measured how long the lips take to get up to top speed for one beatboxer's bilabial Kick Drum closures, and our results are similar to previous reports for similar speech movements.
Beatboxing is a percussive style of vocal music that began with the birth of hip hop. Comparing beatboxing to speech helps us understand why speech uses relatively few of the possible sounds the mouth can make.
Singers need fine-tuned precision to find the right note or sound quality. Measuring how singers adapt speech sounds to music reveals more about the flexibility of the fundamental action units of speech.
Beatrhyming is the simultaneous performance of speech (singing, rapping, etc.) and beatboxing by an individual. Beatrhyming shows how speech can collaborate with other vocal behaviors.
I developed a MatLab user interface to expedite timing analyses of real-time MRI videos like the ones collected by the USC Speech Production and Articulation kNowledge group.
I use evidence-based practices in my teaching and write about the results in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.