Susan holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Virginia and in 2008 received her doctorate in Psychology with an option in Applied Linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University. Her primary areas of interest include first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition, bilingual language production, and bilingual sentence comprehension.

Her research program examines the cognitive processes underlying L1 and L2 development and the general mechanisms that enable bilinguals to have control over their languages. One line of inquiry addresses the extents and limits of L2 learning. Her NSF-supported dissertation investigated constraints in learning a notoriously difficult L2 feature -- grammatical gender in German. In recent developmental research, she has focused on the timing of switching pauses in the conversational turn-taking of parent-child dyads.

Susan started with the Wortschatzinsel in October 2010 as a Dorothea Schlözer postdoctoral fellow where she is focusing on grammatical development in toddlers and language use in bilingual adults. Recently, she was awarded a grant from the Women in Cognitive Science to compare language organization in infants and in bilingual adults. She is also investigating the representation of dialects in speakers of High German and Konstanz German.