Di Eugenio named Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics
Di Eugenio named Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics Heading link
Professor Barbara Di Eugenio was named a 2023 Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). The ACL is the professional society for researchers working on computational models of human language, known as computational linguistics or natural language processing (NLP).
The ACL Fellows program was established in 2011 to recognize ACL members whose contributions to the field have been exemplary in terms of scientific and technical excellence, service to the association and the community, and educational or outreach activities with broader impact.
Di Eugenio is one of five scientists worldwide who was recognized by the ACL as 2023 Fellows.
Her citation reads “for outstanding contributions to natural language generation; intelligent tutoring systems; discourse; intercoder agreement; and applying multimodal interactive systems to health.”
“It is a great honor to be recognized for my research and service contributions to the field of NLP,” Di Eugenio said. “But the honor is not just for me. Without my many collaborators and above all without my PhD students, past and present, I would not be here.”
Di Eugenio is the director of graduate studies for computer science at UIC, a role she has held since 2019. In this role, she is responsible for about 140 PhD students, and 240 MS students. She founded and co-leads a research group, the Natural Language Processing Laboratory, that has been continuously funded by national and international funding agencies for over 20 years. She has personally advised and graduated 15 PhD students and 32 MS students and is currently advising another seven PhD students.
She is committed to improving introductory college computer science instruction and co-authored a book, Intelligent Support for Computer Science Education: Pedagogy Enhanced by Artificial Intelligence, with two of her former PhD students, Davide Fossati and Nick Green. The book was published by CRC Press in 2021.
In 2022 Di Eugenio received the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) Zenith Award, an honor recognizing senior career professionals for their lifetime achievements in STEM and their commitment to workplace diversity. She also received the AWIS Chicago Chapter’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2013. She was named a UIC 2018-2021 University Scholar and received an NSF CAREER award in 2002. She won the UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2019.