About Me

My name is Neng Thao, 𖬀𖬶𖬬 𖬒𖬲𖬟𖬰, and I am a practitioner and scholar of Hmong musical surrogate languages. I graduated from Harvard with my bachelor's degree in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology and was awarded a Fulbright Independent Research Grant in linguistics, which I completed in 2023. My research has allowed me to travel to over 100 different countries and be invited to speak at over 50 universities, conferences, and organizations all around the world.

My research career began in the Whited Lab at Harvard, focusing on limb and organ regeneration in Ambystoma mexicanum. My Fulbright research was conducted in Luang Prabang, Laos, in affiliation with the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre. My past linguistics research focused on the specific musical structures and patterns used to abridge spoken language. Currently, I am interested in how the brain's language network processes and encodes the sounds of musical surrogate speech. Is the language network plastic enough to also process language-based music? How is it that some people are able to perceive seemingly arbitrary sounds as words? And what is the overlap of a surrogate language vs. a second/third/etc. language(s) within the brain?

I also have many ongoing passion projects. As a practicing surrogate language musician, I run a small Hmong instrument shop. In 2021, I founded Gaur, the first project dedicated to reclaiming Hmong antiques. I have since amassed the largest collection of antique Hmong flintlocks in the world, many of which I have redistributed back into the community. I wrote, illustrated, and published the first book to explain the big bang theory to preschoolers, Georgia's Telescope, and am working on a second edition print. I have also created three documentary films and won several community art awards such a Blue Chair Film Festival grant, DANG! Dane Arts Need Grant, and Doodle4Google. In 2019, I was also one of five international recipients of the Hmong American Partnership Community Impact Award—given at the Hmong National Development Conference to those recognized as "A changemaker who is advancing the Hmong community."