Diane J. Litman
Faculty: Intelligent Systems Program (Co-Director 2010-present)
Director: Litman Lab
Research
My research is in the area of
artificial intelligence ,
and includes contributions in the areas of
artificial intelligence and education , computational linguistics ,
knowledge representation and reasoning ,
natural language learning ,
spoken language ,
and user modeling .
My work has included both
fundamental research and applied research resulting in technology
transfer and patents.
My most recent research has been in the area of Speech and Natural Language
Technology for Educational Applications.
Currently funded projects include:
(ArgumentPeer ) Teaching Writing and Argumentation with AI-Supported Diagramming and Peer Review
Peer Review Search & Analytics in MOOCs via Natural Language Processing
(CourseMIRROR ) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education by Integrating Natural
Language Processing with Mobile Technologies
(Teams)
Entrainment and Task Success in Team Conversations
(ArgRewrite )
Computational Models of Essay Rewritings
Using Natural Language Processing to Study the Role of Specificity and
Evidence Type in Text Based Classroom Discussions
(RTA) Response-to-Text Tasks to Assess Students' Use of Evidence
and Organization in Writing: Using Natural Language Processing for
Scoring Writing and Providing Feedback At-Scale
Publications
2003-present
(also available via
Google Scholar ,
Semantic Scholar )
Dissertations Supervised
Hua Ai , Intelligent
Systems, PhD 2009: User
Simulation for Spoken Dialog System Develpment (now Consultant,
Slalom Consulting)Min Chi ,
Intelligent Systems, PhD 2009:
Do
Micro-Level Tutorial Decisions Matter: Applying Reinforcement
Learning To Induce Pedagogical Tutorial Tactics (now Assistant
Professor, NC State University)Michael Lipschultz ,
Computer Science, Phd 2015:
Adapting the
Scheduling of Illustrations and Graphs to Learners in Conceptual
Physics Tutoring (now Software Engineer, IBM)
Wencan Luo , Computer
Science, PhD 2017:
Automatic Summarization for Student Reflective Responses (now at Google)Huy Nguyen , Computer
Science, PhD 2017: Context-aware Argument mining and Its
Application in Education (now at Lenovo)Mihai
Rotaru , Computer Science, PhD 2008:
Applications of Discourse Structure for Spoken Dialogue Systems
(now Head of Research and Development, Textkernel )Arthur Ward , Intelligent Systems, PhD 2010: Reflection and Learning Robustness in a Natural Language Conceptual Physics Tutoring System Wenting Xiong ,
Computer Science, PhD 2015: Helpfulness-Guided Review
Summarization (now Research Staff Member, IBM)Fan Zhang , Computer
Science, PhD 2017: Supporting Revision Assistance for
Peer Review of Argumentative Writings (now at Google) Recent News
November 2016 : Invited
panelist
at AI XPRIZE + Pittsburgh's AI Experts
November 2016 : Teams Corpus (multi-party and multi-modal dialogue entrainment) is now available
for scientific purposes (download)
November 2016 : Invited speaker at NSF-supported EMNLP
workshop on Uphill Battles in Language Processing: Scaling Early
Achievements
to Robust Methods
Fall 2015 : Shaw Visiting professor, Computer Science Department, National University of Singapore
August 2015 : Elected to 3 year term as Councilor , Association for the
Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
August 2015 : Summarizing Student Reflection Corpus is now available
for scientific purposes (download)
January-April 2015 : Derek Brewer Visiting
Fellow , Emmanuel College, Cambridge University
December 2014 : Michael Lipschultz defends his dissertation!
September 2014: ISCA Best Paper Published in Speech Communication (2011-2013) for
"Benefits and challenges of real-time uncertainty detection and
adaptation in a spoken dialogue computer tutor" (with
K. Forbes-Riley)
September 2014: Keynote Speaker, Fifth International
Conference on Computational Models of Argument
August 2014 : Wenting Xiong defends her dissertation!
May 2014:
Royal Academy
of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Award
May 2014: Invited Speaker,
Computational Linguistics and Educational Technology
Winter 2014:
Google Faculty Research Award
(Natural
Language Processing ) (Pitt Chronicle listing )
Archived News
Teaching
CS 0441: Discrete Structures
for Computer Science (Spring 2005, Fall 2006, Spring 2007, Spring 2010)
CS 1571: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Fall 2008, 2017)
CS 1573: Artificial Intelligence Application Development (Spring
2003, 2004)
CS 1590: Social Implications of Computing Technology (Spring 2012,
2013)
CS 2001: Research Topics in Computer Science (Fall 2014)
CS 2710 / ISSP 2160: Foundations of
Artificial Intelligence (Fall 2006, 2009, 2010)
CS 2731 / ISSP 2230: Introduction to Natural Language Processing
(Fall 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2011, 2013; Spring 2017)
CS 3710 / ISSP 3565: Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (Dialog Systems)
(Spring 2002)
CS 3710 / ISSP
3565: Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (Affective Spoken Dialogue Systems)
(Spring 2006)
CS 3710 / ISSP 3565: Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (Speech and Natural Language Processing for Educational Applications)
(Spring 2009)
CS 3710 / ISSP 3565: Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Processing for Extracting Social and Interactional Meaning)
(Fall 2012)
Editorial Positions
Associate Editor ,
International Journal of
Artificial Intelligence in Education
Editorial Board ,
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
Editorial Board ,
Argument and Computation
2017 Activities
Organizing Committee,
SIGDIAL/SEMDIAL Special Session on Negotiation Dialog
Organizing Committee,
4th Workshop on Argument Mining
(EMNLP Workshop )
Program Committee,
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational
Linguistics (ACL)
Program Committee,
Thirty-First
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(Senior Member Track)
Program Committee,
Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
(EMNLP)
Program Committee,
13th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational
Applications (EMNLP Workshop)
Program Committee,
Seventh ISCA Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE)
Program Committee,
International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology
Program Committee,
First Women and Underrepresented Minorities in NLP Workshop
Advisory Committee, Young
Researchers' Roundtable on Spoken Dialog Systems
Brief Biography
I am Professor of Computer Science , and a Senior
Scientist with the Learning Research
and Development Center (LRDC) , at the University of Pittsburgh .
I moved here from the Garden State (aka New Jersey),
where from 1985-2001 I was a member of the Artificial Intelligence
Principles Research Department,
AT&T Labs - Research (formerly
Bell Laboratories );
From 1990-1992, I was also an Assistant Professor of
Computer Science
at
Columbia University .
I received my
Ph.D. and M.S. in
Computer Science
from the University of Rochester ,
and my A.B. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the
College of William and Mary in
Virginia . Here are my informal and
more formal
versions of my academic geneology.
Memberships
American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
(also SIGDIAL ,
SIGGEN ,
SIGNLL )
International Artificial
Intelligence in Education Society (AIED)
International Speech Communication Association (ISCA)
Provost's Advisory Committee on Women's Concerns at the University of Pittsburgh (2002-2005)
American Daffodil Society
July 2016
