Welcome to the interdisciplinary graduate training program in Language and Communication Sciences (LCS) at the University of Pennsylvania.

The LCS program brings together students and faculty from diverse backgrounds and expertise who share an interest in understanding the computational and neural underpinnings of linguistic and nonlinguistic communication, in humans, other animals, and machines.

The program is open to all Penn graduate students currently working toward a Ph.D. in Linguistics, Psychology, Computer and Information Science, or Neuroscience. Interested students from other disciplines can also get involved, and should contact the director of the program to discuss more details.

Topics of interest include:

• How is a language learned?
• How did language evolve and how do languages change over time?
• How are the computational systems involved in communication instantiated in the brain?
• How do the computations underlying communicative systems allow for efficient learning and use?
• What are the processes involved in real-time language comprehension?
• What are the properties of animal communication systems?

These are just some examples of the core questions that drive the scientific study of language and communication research at Penn.