I am an applied computational linguist who has worked in Natural Language Processing (NLP). My primary focus is on educational applications, including evaluating * the quality of writing in essays * the correctness of responses to short-answer questions * the grammaticality of sentences My research has led to the deployment of systems that support assessment and learning in each of these aspects of writing. I have worked on many other projects as well, including content and sentiment analysis, and, as a member of the WordNet group at Princeton’s Cognitive Science Lab, I collaborated with George Miller on word sense disambiguation. In fact, I find all work in Natural Language Processing fascinating … and am always looking for new challenges in the field. Thus far, I have authored or co-authored more than 45 research publications which, according to Google Scholar, have been cited over 4,500 times in the scientific research literature.

Research Scientist III @ Automated Scoring of essays and short-answer questions From March 2012 to 2015 (3 years) McGraw-Hill Education, CTBConsultant @ From 2010 to March 2012 (2 years) Consultant @ Consulting for Microsoft Research on ESL-Assistant, a web-based prototype tool for detecting and correcting grammatical errors of English Language Learners (ELL). From February 2007 to July 2011 (4 years 6 months) Distinguished Member of Technical Staff @ Developed Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to improve analysis and assessment of text: automated scoring of short answer questions, educational standards alignment and metadata tagging. (Telecommuted from NYC.) From 2004 to 2007 (3 years) Principal Development Scientist @ Lead developer of c-raterTM, engine for scoring content-based short-answer questions, and companion application, Alchemist, GUI that test developers use to create scoring models for c-rater. Managed upgrading of grammar, usage, and mechanics modules of CriterionSM On-line Writing Evaluation Service. From 2002 to 2004 (2 years) Co-Director or Research @ Co-directed research and development for Criterion Online Writing Evaluation Service: a web-based instructional tool containing two modules: e-rater™ for scoring essays and Critique Writing Analysis Tools. From 2000 to 2002 (2 years) Research Scientist @ Initiated, received funding, and carried out research projects using NLP tools to increase effectiveness in automated scoring and tools for test developers. From 1997 to 2000 (3 years)

Ph.D., Linguistics @ The Graduate Center of the City University of New YorkPost-Doctoral Fellow, Mathematical Sciences @ IBM, T.J. Watson Research CenterBA, English @ New York University Claudia Leacock is skilled in: Natural Language..., Research, Machine Learning, Testing, Web Applications, Perl, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis, Computational..., Linguistics, Computer Science, LaTeX, NLP, SQL, Information Retrieval, Algorithms