Marco Aurélio Silva Fonseca

Biography

Marco Aurélio Silva Fonseca, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics and SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education) with a Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023, where his dissertation examined the learning of Japanese sounds through experimental and computational approaches. His research focuses on computational linguistics, laboratory phonology, and second language acquisition, with particular emphasis on Japanese phonetics and phonology.

Fonseca's academic training spans multiple countries and institutions. He earned an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Tokyo in 2015, where he studied gesture and timing configurations in Japanese vowel devoicing, and a B.A. in Letters (Linguistics) from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 2012. During his doctoral studies, he spent a year as a research student at the University of Tokyo's Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems. His research has been supported by scholarships from the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, and Technology of Japan and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development.

Before joining UC Irvine in 2024, Fonseca served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese at Whitman College. He has presented his research at numerous international conferences, including the International Conference on Phonetic Sciences and the Conference on Laboratory Phonology, and has published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. His work combines experimental phonetics with computational modeling, including the use of neural networks to model Japanese phonological patterns. Fonseca has also served as a manuscript reviewer for the Association for Computational Linguistics and the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

Education

• Ph.D. in Linguistics and SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education) with a Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2023
• M.A. in Linguistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2018
• M.A. in Linguistics, University of Tokyo, 2015
• B.A. in Letters (Linguistics), Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2012

Distinctions

• Research scholarship, Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, and Technology of Japan, 2012-2015
• Undergraduate research scholarship, Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, 2009-2010, 2011-2012
• Student Leadership Award, Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2017
• Best Japanese Language Teaching Assistant, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017
• Award at research fair, XIX Week of Undergraduate Research at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2010