Kaili completed her PhD in Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics at the University of Essex, using eye-tracking to investigate syntactic and contextual factors affecting children's interpretation of referential forms. After working at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, she moved to Department of Psychology at Cambridge in 2016, working on a research project investigating social learning and brain to brain synchrony in mothers and babies with Prof Victoria Leong. She was later instrumental in setting up the PIPKIN project, looking at social development in infants from the third trimester of pregnancy to five months, and also led a team on a Wellcome LEAP project developing sociometric tools to assess the quality of mother-infant interactions in real time. She is now working with Professor Pasco Fearon on the Blooms (Babies' Longitudinal Outcomes, Omics and Milestones Study) project, investigating the factors that affect school readiness at age five in a cohort of infants who have spent time in neonatal intensive care.
Kaili's primary research interests are in infant social, cognitive and language development, particularly with regards to the role of the home and social environment. As a parent herself she is passionate about the role of science in informing and guiding new parents.
Kaili lectures on child language acquisition and also gives supervisions in the linguistics department for students on the Li3 Language, Brains and Machines module.
