Wendy Lehnert

{{short description|American computer scientist}}

Wendy Grace Lehnert is an American computer scientist specializing in natural language processing and known for her pioneering use of machine learning in natural language processing.{{r|em}} She is a professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.{{r|facdir}}

Education and career

Lehnert earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Portland State University in 1972, and a master's degree from Yeshiva University in 1974.{{r|facdir}} She became a student of Roger Schank at Yale University, completing her Ph.D. there in 1977 with a dissertation on The Process of Question Answering,{{r|mg}} and was hired by Yale as an assistant professor. She moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1982.{{r|facdir}} At Amherst, her doctoral students have included Claire Cardie and Ellen Riloff.{{r|mg}} She retired in 2011.{{r|em}}

Books

Lehnert has written both scholarly and popular books on computing, including:

  • The Process of Question Answering: A Computer Simulation of Cognition (L. Erlbaum Associates, 1978){{r|pqa}}
  • Light on the Web: Essentials to Make the 'Net Work for You (Addison-Wesley, 1981)
  • Strategies for Natural Language Processing (with Martin Ringle, L. Erlbaum Associates, 1982)
  • The Web Wizard's Guide to Freeware and Shareware (Addison-Wesley, 1982)
  • Internet 101: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet and the World Wide Web (Addison-Wesley, 1998)
  • The Web Wizard's Guide to HTML (Addison-Wesley, 2001)
  • Web 101: Making the Net Work for You (with Richard Kopec, Addison-Wesley; 3rd ed., 2007)

Recognition

In 1991, Lehnert was elected as an AAAI Fellow.{{r|aaai}}

References

{{reflist|refs=

{{citation|url=https://www.aaai.org/Awards/fellows-list.php|title=AAAI Fellows list|access-date=2019-12-11}}

{{citation|url=https://www.cics.umass.edu/news/latest-news/wendy-lehnert-retires|title=Wendy Lehnert retires|date=December 14, 2011|publisher=University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences|access-date=2019-12-11}}

{{citation|url=https://www.cics.umass.edu/faculty/directory/lehnert_wendy|title=Wendy G. Lehnert|date=20 February 2008 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences|access-date=2019-12-11}}

{{mathgenealogy|id=16979}}

{{citation|title=Review of The Process of Question Answering|first=Lance A.|last=Miller|journal=Contemporary Psychology|volume=24|issue=10|year=1979|pages=777–779|doi=10.1037/017603|url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/J80-3006.pdf}}

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