Nina Wacholder

Nina Wacholder’s research interests lie at the intersection of information science, computer science, and linguistics. Her goal is to understand the impact of properties of human language, such as ambiguity and irregularity on the exchange of information among people and between people and computers. Her research focuses on using computer technology to improve people’s access to information stored in the form of language. She is co-director of SALTS, the laboratory for the Study of Applied Language Technology and Society. She is also the director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival Archive Project. 

Her current projects include the study of argument mining and argumentation, methodologies for studying human ability to recognize subtle linguistic phenomena and using knowledge about human language behavior to train automatically developed language models; assessment of the quality of index terms as used in electronic indexes and browsing systems, impact of readability of consumer health information on low literacy adults; and development of a theory of query term formulation in the information access process. She has also published on the evaluation of question answering systems, identification of proper names, and anatomical ontologies.

Wacholder has received funding from Google, the National Science Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She has secured patents for a method and system for identifying significant topics of a document; processing names in a text; and a system and method for using canonical forms to develop a dictionary of names in a text.

Ph.D., Linguistics, City University of New York Graduate Center
M.A., Library Science, Columbia University
B.A., Classical Languages, Oberlin College

SALTS Lab