I’m currently a research scientist on the Responsible AI team at Google in NYC. I work on understanding the effects of different aspects of data collection protocols — the task set up, how the labels are aggregated, who’s doing the annotation, etc.

Academic

In September 2022, I received my PhD in linguistics from New York University, where I was a member of the Neuroscience of Language Lab, Machine Learning for Language Lab, and the Child Language Lab. I collaborated with students and faculty in a range of departments during my time at NYU. I worked on several NLP projects where I was able to use insights from linguistics and psychology to develop challenging test datasets, test crowdsourcing methodologies, and develop new tasks motivated by human language processing principles, most often working with Sam Bowman on these projects. As part of my work on language processing, I investigated how people develop, store, and use abstract representations in sentence processing using both behavioral and neurolinguistic methods, primarily with my adviser, Liina Pylkkanen.

I completed an M.A. in linguistics in May 2017 after working for a few years in the EEG lab at Michigan State University with my adviser, Alan Beretta. My research has focused on how people process nominal compounds in sentences as a way of understanding what cues can lead a parser to commit to a structure it has built, and what elicits the need for revisions of that structure.

Personal

I’m a strong believer in community engagement through volunteering. I spent three years in the Peace Corps serving in Benin, and I worked for two years with The Listening Ear Crisis Intervention Center as a volunteer crisis counselor on their hotline. Since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve worked with Community Help in Park Slope (CHiPS) for a couple of years, volunteering with their residence program and soup kitchen. Most recently, I’ve been volunteering with the Red Hook Boaters to offer free kayaking to people in New York, allowing more people to experience the harbor.

I also really enjoy just about anything that takes me outdoors. Several times per year, I go hiking, camping, biking, etc. Fun fact: I was an amateur circus performer for four years.

Name

I pronounce my first name [ə’liʃə] (uh-LEE-shuh).